“The Dog Ate My Homework...”
...and Other Poor Excuses for Not Archiving
Recommendations
In the short term, it’s better to have a broad policy for archiving in place and implement an archiving software product immediately, then fine-tune the policy based on particulars as they are understood. This enables you to efficiently and effectively preserve electronically stored information in the event of litigation and reduces the risk of spoliation. Implementing a broad policy today will help ensure your organization is able to retrieve and produce specific email records in the event of litigation, avoiding costly fines for not being able to do so. You will know what you have and where it’s located—one centralized, tamper-proof repository instead of volumes of backup tapes. Therefore, email archiving software is extremely cost effective, both in terms of reducing management time and costs and helping a company better prepare to respond to an e-discovery request or internal investigation.
Top Five Considerations for Choosing an Archiving Technology
Selecting an archiving solution for email and other vital business data can seem like a daunting task. By definition, archiving is a long-term proposition, so it’s important to evaluate the available products thoroughly before making a decision. Keeping a few basic principles in mind can help you with that process. Here are five recommendations for choosing an archiving technology:
1. Think long term. Be sure to select an archiving product that is flexible enough to support changes in your business and computing environment. Your chosen solution should be able to maintain and enhance performance levels when you add users, data and applications.
2. Consider manageability. IT organizations are demanding manageability from archives similar to what they get from other infrastructure applications. Secure, role-based administration and granular provisioning and reporting are the foundations of a good archiving solution.
3. Focus on content intelligence. Because not all information is created equal, organizations need to manage and retain different pieces of information based on their individual value. Certain content (such as orders and contracts) may need to be maintained for years, while other data (such as personal email and newsletters) can be eliminated more quickly.
4. Optimize your total cost of ownership. While email archives often provide a quick return on investment from storage savings, a good solution also provides technical and administrative functionality that helps lower the cost of administration and overall ownership of the archive.
5. Look for best-of-breed, open solutions. Your archiving platform should be able to grow and integrate with other systems as your environment changes and expands. It must provide open application programming interfaces (APIs) and broad support for long-term storage, as well as for structured and unstructured data besides email.
Store, Manage and Discover
Symantec Enterprise Vault provides a software-based intelligent archiving platform to store, manage and discover corporate data from email systems, file-server environments, instant message platforms and content management and collaboration systems. Because not all data is created equal, Enterprise Vault utilizes intelligent classification and retention technologies to capture, categorize, index and store target data to enforce policies and protect corporate assets, while reducing storage costs and simplifying management. It also provides specialized applications such as "Discovery Accelerator" and "Compliance Accelerator" to mine archived data in support of legal discovery, content compliance, knowledge management and information security initiatives.
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help businesses and consumers secure and manage their information-driven world. Headquartered in Cupertino, CA, Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries. For white papers, resources and demos visit:
www.enterprisevault.com