You have an email archive and you’re doing everything right in disaster planning. You’re archiving to an off-site storage facility, the archives are easily searchable, and remotely accessible.

Email archiving has been a hot button for several reasons, the most noteworthy of which are compliance with regulation, compliance with internal policy, and disaster preparedness. We’re always facing increased regulation, and there’s likely to be more, especially with the renewed Federal focus on cyberspace security. Disaster preparedness has been on everyone’s minds ever since 9/11, and it was reinforced by Hurricane Katrina, and this increased awareness is a good thing for everyone. And finally, more internal policies are including more details and requirements concerning email archives as part of their overall security and emergency preparedness initiatives.

Of course, archives aren’t always efficient. And since they’re archives, with data that we don’t need to access that often, they don’t get tested on a regular basis. With tape backups especially, it’s easy for data to get lost, and difficult to conduct quick searches. The answer is an occasional “dry run.”

A survey conducted in association with the British Cabinet Office by the Chartered Management Institute noted that “exercises are a fundamental aspect of a good BCM (business continuity management) practice”. These exercises let IT managers and disaster planning officers tweak processes and procedures as needed so that response to emergencies can be efficient. According to the survey, 57 percent of managers who do have business continuity plans, have such exercises more than once a year–although 32 percent do not rehearse their plans at all.

Finally, here’s a statistic from the report that gives us some solid evidence that exercises are a good idea. Seventy five percent of those who did have exercises, said that the exercises revealed shortcomings in their plans, giving them an opportunity to make improvements before a real disaster occurred.