Email: Control, Retention and Toleration

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Email, whether you like it or not is here to stay, or rather electronic communication is. The true sign that it is here to stay is when legislation appears to control the use of it. Globally this legislation is here and in many ways it is a good thing.

Three words can truly be associated with electronic communication today.

Control

All communication tools need to be controlled in the business environment. This includes email, internet and even mobile phone useage. There are a great number of tools on the market that help anyone do this. This is where Antivirus meets Email Archiving.

The control of your systems often means compliance. A dreadful and often feared word Compliance should really be called "common sense". I question why anyone need be afraid of compliance. If anyone is afraid of complying with anything does this hide a guilty conscience or does it simply show basic ignorance and that there is concern of "getting wrong" when putting in the compliance systems be they automated or manual?

With control one often gets compliance and with control a clear picture of all systems is pretty much ensured to be seen and made available.

So, for control look at implementing a simple Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). Don't be afraid of the users, make it simple for them and as non-threatening as possible. Good control, even without an email archiving system will bring immediate results to any business.

Retention

"where will I store it all?" is the standard Question. Planned retention need not be a storage intensive process. Knowing what is needed, why it is needed, by whom and for how long can dramatically reduce storage requirements.

Retention is common sense, it is something that any business has been doing for centuries. Infomation has always been kept on things that are important to the people or the company of the day. The same is true today. If you think the information or items are or will be required at a future date for anything then there is a good chance it needs to be retained. But retention does not mean hording. Keeping everything is madness and if legislation says it is not needed then don't keep it! But if you suspect it may be then keep it - create a "grey area", this can save storage space. Establish an SOP to monitor this "grey area" and once the grey item has passed through delete or retain, a manual, slow but useful process that many companies and their ISPs are now implementing - man meets machine!

Toleration.

Today we want everything yesterday. We want things to be correct first time. We want freedom. With control and retention this may not be as easily available as one would like. Toleration is necessary, it's a fact of life so treat the fact that you can't get exactly what you want as a good thing, for many it will ensure that they receive their pay cheque. Stressing and fighting won't help.

But the toleration can be helped. With the correct system in your business you can win. Some solutions worth looking at include:

Mail Management

Naxian Message Tracker - www.naxian.com
Sherpa Mail and Archive Attender - www.sherpasoftware.com
GFI - www.gfi.com
Mimecast - www.mimecast.com

Virus Control
Quick Heal - www.quickheal.com
eScan - www.mwti.net
Kaspersky - www.kaspersky.com
F-secure - www.fsecure.com