Freedom9 looks to secure the channel

By Correspondent Derek Armstrong

REPRODUCED WITH PERMISSION OF SECURE NET NEWS

Email is arguably the most important single tool of nearly every business, from highly secure military applications, to sensitive mission critical communications at hospitals, to a mom and pop shop with two computers. Email Archiving is no longer just a matter of common sense. It's required.

Common Sense
Email archiving has become common sense in a world dominated by email communications. Everything from e-ordering to public relations, to medical files flying back and forth on the internet on secure and not-so-secure routes, and emails carrying attachments, opinions, legal arguments, mission-critical time-flows, software code, critical images and — not so wholesome, the inevitable office romances, abusive emails and lots of spam — flies by the trillions of bits per minute across the internet.

Compliance
Mission critical organizations may already be mandated to comply with rules and regulations that compel them to record email messages and information, and often even internet visits, traffic and destinations. The reasons are clear.

Liability with a capital L
It’s scary out there. With million dollar lawsuits for email abuse. Employees fired because of their internet activities. Secrets lost. Productivity costs due to over use of the internet by employees for their own personal needs.

Practical Implementation
From a practical point of view, simple capacity management is a good reason for implementing email archiving and internet recording in almost any size enterprise or institutions. Reducing storage demands for email systems can be a big resource savings.

Compliance Needs
Laws mandate compliance with new rules in email archiving and even internet recording to allow for legal discovery and comply with FRCP rules or even the Freedom of Information Act. Laws include:
• Sarbanes-Oxley
• HIPAA
• SEC
Many other laws require a common sense approach to information management including robust email archiving.

The Realities of Email Archiving
Without a functioning appliance specifically designed to email archive, no company would have the resources necessary to monitor and record emails sufficiently to protect against possible liability or productivity loss. Although typically viewed as a “big ticket” investment, there are many low cost appliances with vast capacities available for any size institution or enterprise. freedom9 is one company that specializes in email archivers combined with internet recording (including the risky employee Instant Messaging) at a very low cost to functionality ratio. Barracuda is known as the classic middle-cost choice. For most enterprises there’s not much need to go to bigger appliances in the heady price range of automobiles.

Tactical Deployment of Email Archiving

Start by Removing Dead Data Before Your First Major Archive
Resources will be strained if you try to archive “straight up” without a quick go through to remove the staggering debris that gathers up in any company IT infrastructure. Take the time to plan, to clean and to purge.

Worry About Today, But Think About Tomorrow
Capacity is not just about now. Most companies and institutions find their email messaging grows at exponential rates. Assume you will need to grow capacity 50 percent per year or more to avoid costly re-implementation in the future.

Develop Policies
Minimize administration to maximize security and improve access. Once you implement a good email archiving appliance. Since email archiving provides searching functionality and immense retention capabilities, most companies can develop policies that will reduce infrastructure needs and costs to a manageable level. Always consult with you legal counsel before implementing a final policy.

Implementation Considerations
Email archiving and internet recording will always create requirements for typical IT issues such as desktop updates, software and sometimes additional hardware to be installed and maintained. Make a tick list of all the requirements, including storage, updates and equipment.

Phase in a Solution
For larger implementations consider managing your needs in phases, either department by department or unit by unit. A pilot test may also be an important step to a seamless transition. .

Test, Test, Test…
Test the recording and the recovery of archived emails before a wide implementation. You may be backing up a decade of emails, which can be resource intense. Test first!

It’s important to understand that archived emails will take more time to recover than server-stored emails. Remember also that millions of emails (if you are doing a retroactive archive) can take a long time to archive and require vast resources. Consider a go-forward approach initially.

Back up the Archive
This may seem counter-intuitive, but it is important to back up your archive. Multiple backups are always a good idea, build around a proper disaster recovery plan. This means a separate location for the backup.