Time to Reexamine Email Archiving

Haha, slfisher, indeed: Some analytics experts do say the more data you feed in, the more information you get out. Does that necessarily apply to regular internal corporate email? Maybe only for certain departments and LOBs. The kind of unstructured data these folk are analyzing is customer data, information about transactions, etc.

I've heard of the government coming after email in gmail, say, but not against that of a private company in the cloud, though I suppose it's just a matter of time.

As far as archiving, many experts agree with Kim and say delete as much as possible. Then we've got the big data guys who do increasingly sophisticated analysis, who want more data. It will be interesting to see who wins.

I've had some experience with document retention policies at large corporations.

They're complicated.

As suggested above, they need to be responsive to regulatory requirements, business functionality, and legal requirements.  The policies should obviously cover electronic communications.

In my own opinion, the basis from which you start is that if you don't need to keep it, get rid of it -- and that means really get rid of it.  You never want to have to go back over massive archives which nobody ever filtered or winnowed properly.

But be sure first that you don't need to keep it.

I wonder if some spam email may at some future time be used as "evidence" in a lawsuit. Just imagne a prosecutor or plaintiff attorney arguing that some unsolicited email to your account is proof of some wrongdoing on your part. 

With spam still a good portion of email traffic, it wouldn't be hard to image some attorney putting a case together on such premises.

When I depart this world, I just know I will wake up to a console with a series of emails that have "Dear" in the subject line.

Seriously, spam will be always with us. Spam is more manageable than it used to be, but I'm sure no enterprise filter can completely excise it from any archive.

If value can be assigned to data, at least some estimates could be created, no?

 Financial and healthcare records must be kept for specified time periods...

That's an excellent example of how there's no single best solution -- because it depends on various government requirements. As you noted, Financial and healthcare records must be kept for specific time periods, but presumably that requirement doesn't extend to every business. So smaller companies that aren't legally required to keep records may choose to reduce their IT budgets by minimizing email servers and data archiving. 

All these issues make me wonder how much spam is being archived because an IT dept is legally required to maintain all records and spam can't be deleted b/c there's a risk that legit emails will also be removed.... 

Mary - I am sure that the factoring of loss is something that companies large and small take into consideration, in email and other communications. I would imagine that it is difficult if not impossible to place a pricetag on it. Sometimes the cost is small, sometimes high - sometimes the cleanup is manageable, other times, it is a real mess.

It is no easy task, and I don't pretend it is for any company - again, large or small.

For better or worse, lots of companies are regulated in terms of how long they keep email. It depends on the industry you're in. Financial and healthcare records must be kept for specified time periods, I think.

Sad but true that we may learn the hard way about email's vulnerabilities, SteveGNYC. When you mention that the danger is part of the price paid for convenience, it seems like a no-brainer that companies would start factoring in potential losses when tallying the cost and ROI of archived email services and products.

But why don't I think that's the case?

Thanks for the compliment, Steve!