Unfailing Performance Reveals Business Perseverance

Today the world is completely consumed by technology and its multi-faceted advantages. Technology has provided us the opportunity to accomplish feats that were considered impossible few years back. With the advent of the internet, technology has made our lives easier and comfortable. Doing business with the push of a button on the keyboard was an unthinkable notion. But now life will cease to exist without the internet.

Internet has helped ecommerce to flourish. Online businesses have scored outstanding results. Contracts and business dealings have all become a simple task without the hassle of coordinating and scheduling physical meetings. Your wish to communicate with your partners, customers, suppliers or vendors can be fulfilled through emails. All important business documents can be easily transported from the sender to the receiver within minutes through the internet.

Although communication and information exchange has become easy through the internet eliminating any extra costs, there are grave dangers lurking in the online world too. There is no dearth of criminals who know very well how to steal information illegally. Now this information could be confidential with details about the business, its clients, its strategies etc. Anyone can misuse this information and cause irreparable damage to the concerned business.

Data protection has become one of the most important issues in today’s competitive world. If you have a business that is doing very well and if you have unique ideas you can be assured that there will be countless rivals who will try to get hold of your critical information. Some have suffered massive losses due to lack of security measures while some have suffered due to their callous attitude. Companies are awakening to the dangers and effects of exposed and unsafe data and employing data protection solutions to stop the malicious attacks.

As competition is increasing businesses are facing challenges in increasing their profits while retaining their budgets. Technology has provided yet another channel to alleviate their burden. With the help of virtual servers businesses have encountered favorable experiences. A virtual server is a flexible option that has helped in reducing costs and improving the performance of the systems. However the threat of data being compromised is still high in virtual servers as these are not under your control.

If you have already started using the virtual servers or intend to use one in future ensure that you collaborate with a reliable vendor who can guarantee you robust and compelling data protection solutions with advanced features. Also they should have the facility to provide you with virtual server disaster recovery solutions in case of any natural or intentional calamities. If your business has the ability to recover immediately and function normally irrespective of any catastrophic circumstance then there is nothing to stop it from reaching its glorious heights.

Learn more about: email compliance and email archiving

Importance of Data Protection for Small Businesses

Small businesses face the same basic data protection challenges as large businesses. The dangers and potential costs of unprotected data can easily be as catastrophic for a small firm as they are for a large one. Unfortunately, there are far fewer resources available to small businesses to address the problem than there are for larger businesses.

Importance of Data Protection
As information changes hands numerous times each day through the use of file transfers, downloads, email, etc., data can also be transferred unknowingly to others. In instances of the sale of used computers or stolen laptops, a large amount of confidential information can be lost, thereby putting many at risk. Data protection is needed to protect systems from viruses or cyber attacks, as it ensures that even if it does get into the wrong hands, it will be secure.
The main forms of data protection solutions available are anti virus software, firewalls, data encryption, etc., and there may be a necessity to invest in additional security software if the data is very sensitive. With just basic protection, data can be easily protected from anyone who might obtain it by accident. However, in the case of hackers or identity thieves, there is a large risk of data being misused. The loss or breach of data, especially the personal data of customers and clients, can result in fines. If the company deals in this type of data, there must be adequate care taken to see that it is fully protected within federal and state guidelines.

How to ensure data protection
Almost 21 percent of small business employees think that the IT department could do a better job of protecting them from the impending risks connected with data-stealing malware. In addition to that, around 35 percent of employees in small companies indicated that the IT department could have done a better job of educating them about data-stealing malware. To prevent data loss, it is recommended that small businesses train employees about the importance of data, the risks of data loss and how to prevent it. The training needs to be done periodically to ensure its effectiveness.

 
To reduce the risk of data loss, small businesses can also use technical solutions. One step to curb data loss is to make sure that the operating system and applications do not have vulnerabilities. If any are detected, they need to be addressed in a timely manner. Due to tight IT security budgets, small businesses need to look for security products that combine anti-virus, anti malware and data loss prevention.

 
The biggest risk group for data loss are businesses who have small LAN setups and standalone computers as many small businesses do not have the exchange backup or procedures in place to create regular backups. Contrary to popular belief backups do not cost time or money. And by ensuring that data at your company is backed up consistently and protected from theft or loss, you can save your business from potential predicaments in the future.

You may also check it out - email archiving and email compliance

Choosing an Email Archiving Solution

As large numbers of enterprises today are investigating email archiving solutions, it is critical to understand and evaluate these solutions. Before embarking on an email archiving solution there is a need to understand a range of business and technology issues. Understanding the reasons why your organization needs an email archiving solution and how to choose one that fits your needs will play a key role in choosing the right solution for your enterprise. 

Need for Archiving

Regardless of the size of the industry, electronic search and electronic discovery have become prime considerations for every business. Electronic discovery is the retrieval of data to meet a legal request, regulatory compliance, human resource concern or any other corporate need. All organizations benefit from the search and discovery capabilities for email. It is therefore essential to provide a secure, searchable and centralized repository for email. And an archive can address the complete range of legal, regulatory, business and storage challenges presented by email.

Email Archiving Solutions

It is vital to examine the types of email archiving solutions as that will help in selecting a solution that will work best for your organization. Understanding the differences between the solutions is critical in determining the best solution.

• In-house Archiving Solutions

An organization needs to define requirements and purchase the necessary software to deploy an in-house email archiving solution. The organization would also need a significant amount of storage hardware considering the large amount of email data that is usually sent. Typically, an in-house email archiving solution uses a dedicated, server based platform that copies all email from the message store into an archive.  There are certain solutions that require software to be employed on all employees’ PCs to facilitate searching and retrieval. 

In-house solutions offer a high level of data security and control, along with convenient integration with other systems in the organization’s infrastructure. But when considering an in-house email archiving solution, organizations need to keep in mind the additional cost, as these solutions can be expensive to acquire and require skilled personnel to maintain. 

• Hosted Archiving Solutions

A hosted archiving solution is an alternative to the in-house approach. This solution allows a company to archive its data at a different location, thereby reducing the burden on internal IT resources. By outsourcing, the company can avoid the costs of buying the necessary hardware and software and do away with the inconvenience of maintaining an archiving system. 

However, the lack of data security is a serious concern in this approach. Storing confidential data at a third party location can lead to security breaches and privacy concerns, as in most hosted solutions the archived data is not encrypted. Another additional challenge can be the actual management of the archives as there is no direct integration with the organization’s email server.

• SAAS hybrid archiving solutions

The other approach that is fast emerging is the SAAS (software-as-a-service) hybrid model. This solution involves an appliance installed at the customer site that is pooled with secure storage managed in the cloud by a third party provider. This approach combines the convenience of a hosted solution with the best security features of an in-house solution. In certain instances, before the data leaves the customer location, encryption is performed, ensuring that the archived content can not be accessed from outside the customer’s network. 

The hybrid solution is likely to become the popular approach as organizations come to understand the long term costs and maintenance required by email archiving. 

As the electronic data within a corporate environment continues to rise, it is imperative to archive, especially considering that email is fast becoming the electronic equivalent of DNA evidence. It is therefore crucial for any business to have a sound solution in place.

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email compliance and exchange recovery

Email Archiving - The Achilles Heel of Document and Records Management

Email has developed into a major communication channel within every company with thousands of them being exchanged every day. As most business critical information is sent over email, it is imperative for companies to archive all records, whether in paper or electronic form for compliance purposes. The need for compliance has been mandatory due to demands made by government and regulatory bodies like the SEC, Sarbanes-Oxley and Basel II, which were primarily driven by instances of email mismanagement. Over the last couple of years more than 90% of disputes have included email as part of the evidence.

According to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, public companies must keep all documents and communications for seven years following an audit. The penalties for destroying or altering a document can include fines of up to $5 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure state that businesses that have the potential to be involved in lawsuits must prepare themselves to turn over email communications, if requested in a court case. Companies who don't have access to this information may lose lawsuits or incur extra expenses to recover necessary emails. Hence, email is becoming the Achilles heel of document and records management. The best way to protect yourself is through an effective email archiving solution that has become a major challenge for companies.

What is Email Archiving?

Email archiving is an organized way of capturing, saving and protecting every email that moves through your organizations server so that users can access it later, all the while conserving storage space. Email archiving makes it easy to store and manage large volumes of email at a single time and with search and retrieve tools to locate specific emails within minutes, saving companies precious time.

Email archiving not only ensures that the organization remains compliant with applicable laws and regulations; it is the best way to meet eDiscovery requirements. Although email archiving projects are frequently managed by the exchange server administrator, the choice of email archiving software must be carefully evaluated before implementing.

Benefits of Email Archiving

More and more businesses are now using archiving for storage management, to monitor employee communications and for disaster recovery.

Monitoring Employee Communication – This is usually used in legal proceedings where e-mail evidence is requested in association with an employee’s violation of corporate e-mail policies or misuse of business e-mail.

Storage Management – Archiving data helps eliminate past messages and helps free up space on the email server.

Disaster Recovery - Disaster can halt the normal operation of day-to-day business activities. Archiving helps recover the information to the same or to a new server at disk-transfer and LAN speeds. You can recover accidentally deleted or destroyed records that have been archived.

Working without an email archiving solution could be dangerous. Email archiving is perfect for companies who are looking for a solution to protect their mission critical data, reduce server load from emails and preserve data for legal and regulatory compliance requirements.

You may also take a look at -   email archiving solutions  and  email compliance 

Features to Consider While Deploying Archiving Solution

All these requirements lead to a long list of features that have to be supported by a real archiving solution tailored to the SMB. Requirements such as:

•  User ID management
•  User Transparency
•  Capture capability
•  Extraction capability
•  De‐duplication
•  Compression/encryption
•  Retention capabilities
•  Storage capabilities
•  Meta data capabilities
•  Search capabilities (search in search)
•  Litigation hold/Case management
•  Examination (compliance, questionable use)
•  Record destruction procedure
•  Platform support (HW, SW, OS, Mail, Client)
•  Index/Data Base Architecture
•  Data protection solution capabilities.

An SMB must carefully choose which email archiving solution to deploy. If the wrong solution is chosen, the SMB’s e‐mail troubles will double instead of disappear.

The ubiquity of e‐mail within an SMB continues to pose a number of challenges in the areas of storage, mail box size and secure information retrieval. Sonasoft offers a comprehensive portfolio of products for data recovery, exchange backup and recovery, e‐mail archiving and data protection.

Sonasoft ensures that data and applications are protected at all times so that the SMB business continues to run smoothly without any disruption. Sonasoft provides simplified storage and quick, easy access to critical data all at cost effective price points targeted for the SMB budget.

Sonasoft’s Email Archival solutions, SonaVault, is designed to meet regulatory compliance needs of organizations. SonaVault Email Archive systems will capture all incoming, outgoing and internal emails and store them in archive databases as a Single Instance Store (SIS). Also, by use of optional stubbing feature, message contents including attachments will be saved in the archive database and leave behind an empty shell of the message, namely stub in the body of the email. Alternatively messages can be completely deleted from users mailbox and users can access archived emails through SonaVault Web Console. This approach will reduce the size of the Exchange server by up to 90%. SonaVault  Email Archiving Software solution supports Exchange Server 2000, 2003, 2007 and 2010. SonaVault solution employs reliable safeguards, including encryption to ensure that the email is tamper-proof and cannot be altered. The solution gives the ability to migrate all existing PST file data into the archive repository. This enables organizations to eliminate PST files proliferation across the enterprise, thus resulting in better email management.

Email Archiving — A Necessity for Business Success

In today’s tech savvy era, businesses rely heavily on email for business communications. Apart from this there are huge amounts of information also being shared electronically, and almost 80 percent of this information is stored as unstructured data. With newer regulatory compliance rules in force, data must now be stored and managed for longer periods of time. This poses a huge challenge for enterprises. Email turns up at the center of evidence discovery in a growing number of civil and regulatory actions. It is worth taking into account what your company would do tomorrow if it received a subpoena for voluminous email records. If the information is not organized, it will be very difficult to find specific information when needed. The need for secure access to information is critical.

According to a Current Analysis report entitled “E‐mail Archiving” from April 2009, “Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure for Electronic Discovery (FRCP) enacted in December 2006 are thrusting new document retention policies to the front of the CIO’s project list.” Unlike some more specific compliance regulations, e‐discovery rules affect every type of company in every industry.

To protect mission critical emails and applications, enterprises must have proper email archiving solutions in place. Research has shown that on an average an employee spends up to an hour and a half everyday managing their mailboxes and performing archiving and data management tasks. This leads to loss of productivity and moreover most exchange servers are set to make backups once per day. In the case of any problem, the mail sent throughout the day does not get archived.

Whether it is high-profile court cases involving corporate management or simply the amount of data storage that email and its attachments eat up, IT managers are increasingly putting email archiving at the top of their priority lists. Moreover businesses are now using archiving for not only storage management, but to monitor employee communications and for disaster recovery.

Benefits of Email Archiving

• Meeting Legal Requirements – When faced with civil litigation, enterprises must be in compliance with various regulatory rules and policies regarding the storage, management and retrieval of electronic data. This requires businesses involved in federal court cases to identify, preserve and collect electronically stored information. The email archive should be fully indexed and searchable so that retrieving email is done as efficiently as possible. This saves businesses from paying costly lawyer fees for manual searching of printed emails
• Improved System Performance – Email archiving eliminates the need to delete messages and helps reduce server space. The archived data is secured in offsite data centers and can be accessed by the user from any internet enabled computer. There is also quicker access to the now smaller mailboxes and better protection of email in the case of an outage or maintenance window.
• Retain Corporate Information - Archiving can be used to analyze email and make centralized decisions and actions.
• Monitor Employee Communication - Monitoring employee communication is usually helpful in legal proceedings wherein a request for email evidence in association with an employee’s violation of corporate email policies or misuse of business email is made.
• Disaster Recovery – Another reason for businesses to archive data is if their systems fail. If the latest backup of the email database is corrupt, you at least have a copy of all emails. You can easily reinstall your email server, and you can restore email from the archive to the email database.

The email archiving vendor landscape is evolving so vendors can compete on reporting tools, data classification capabilities and search functions. Do a complete analysis before selecting the right email archiving system for your enterprise.

You may also take a look at - exchange backup