We hear a lot of talk these days about the benefits of a hosted Exchange deployment.  Probably reflecting the desires of IT managers on the ground, Microsoft’s latest and greatest version of the Exchange messaging server, better known as Exchange 2010, was touted by Microsoft to be “designed from the ground up” to be equally at ease running as a hosted service or as an on-premise solution.

While running one’s Exchange server on a hosted service certainly does have its allure, e-mail administrators or IT managers ultimately need to consider and weigh the merits of both scenarios carefully.  So when does it make sense for organizations to opt for an on-premise deployment of Exchange?

Let’s take a look at some of them today.

More choice of anti-spam and anti-malware solutions

The state of spam and malware proliferation via e-mail today means there is little tolerance for any Exchange installation that is not protected by some sort of spam and malware filtering.  While most hosted Exchange providers incorporate some form of spam protection, choices offered might be limited or expensive.  The alternative would be to opt for a cloud-based anti-spam service by using MX forwarding, though adding in another hosted service does increase the recurring cost of the hosted Exchange deployment.

On the other hand, an on-premise installation of Microsoft Exchange gives businesses a free rein on whether they want to rely on a cloud-based anti-spam service or a traditional server-deployed solution such as GFI MailSecurity, which allows for a greater degree of configurability.  In fact, it is entirely feasible to deploy both in tandem if necessary.

Heightened confidentiality and compliance

Where there have been many prominent news reports of organizations shifting to a hosted e-mail deployment, a closer examination will show that they are often not companies in the financial, health or other tightly-regulated sectors.

The truth is that the outsourcing of critical installations does not exonerate an organization should something go wrong, as can be evidenced by the case of the prominent seven hours downtime experienced by Singapore bank DBS recently.  The fact that the affected infrastructure was operated and maintained by IT vendor IBM – and the mistake perpetuated by personnel from IBM, cut no ice with the government regulator, who slapped a number of measures on the bank to censure it for the outage.

Another complication inherent to an Exchange deployment has to do with how legal jurisdiction is typically applied based on the location of the physical server.  And what happens if the data is stored at an off-site location in yet another country?  In fact, compliance laws might mean that a hosted deployment might not even be legally possible in the first place – an aspect worth investigating first.

Increased Backup and Archival Options

Moving on, an on-premise Exchange deployment also offers much greater flexibility when it comes to e-mail archival and management of backups.  While all cloud providers will position their backup capabilities as a selling point, the recent data loss experienced by some users of online note-taking service Evernote is a sombre reminder that mistakes can and do happen.

Ultimately, an on-site installation presents the e-mail administrator with the largest number of tried-and-tested solutions that can be used to backup Exchange mailboxes under their charge.  In addition, companies interested in increasing their Exchange performance will also be able to make use of solutions such as GFI MailArchiver to help create backups of old e-mail without running afoul of e-mail retention policies.

Better performance

It is now an accepted practice to connect to Microsoft Exchange via HTTP, which contributes to administrators making the mistaken assumption that the performance for a local area network (LAN) deployment compared to that of a hosted Exchange server is similar. The truth is that an on-site deployment within the network will always perform better than any service hosted on the Internet – where it is subjected to the fluctuating conditions of one’s ISP connection or the bandwidth capacity of your hosting provider.

This is especially important since employees are increasingly using Microsoft Exchange not just for e-mails, but as a collaboration and productivity tool with which to track contacts, schedule meetings, or even to book company resources like meeting rooms and projectors.  And depending on company policies, IT managers might need to roll-out brand new workstations (or do a fresh install) every couple of years.  The performance of a local Exchange deployment will be much faster during these periods.

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Some Reasons for an On-Premise Deployment of Exchange Server

Email retention is a very important component in every company’s day to day business practices. The reasons are many: legal requirements, efficient use of storage, privacy of corporate email messages and others.

Policies and best practices should be clearly stated in every company’s IT department for how best to archive the multitude of emails that accumulate each day.

Here are some of the best practices and considerations for email archival.

1. Indexing and searching capability should be features of all email archival systems. Companies need to be able to respond quickly to requests for old emails particularly when those requests are coming from legal entities outside of the company. Months and months of email messages can quickly become millions of archived messages. IT departments will need to be able to respond to information requests in the least amount of time possible so as to meet any legal requirements necessary. Having a fully indexed archival message system will support the retrieval of any documents or email messages in a short period of time. In addition, being able to respond to requests for archived emails can help to meet discovery or subpoena requests in a timely manner.
2. Audit trails should be another component of any good email archival system. Companies need to secure and track their archived emails to meet the regulations of the various governing bodies such as the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) that can request specific emails from them. Audit trails can also be used to prove compliance with reporting regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.
3. Complete email integrity needs to be maintained so as to meet the rules of evidentiary standards. Email integrity can be maintained by use of electronic signatures and time stamps of each email that is archived, redundancy of archival systems to provide continuous access to archived emails and encryption of email messages to protect against tampering of original data.
4. Virus scanning of all email messages prior to archival should be an additional step in the archival process so as to ensure not only the integrity of archived email messages but also the protection of email system at the time of retrieval of email messages from the archive system.
5. Support of multiple email systems and protocols is another feature that can help to reduce the number of archive systems that are needed within a corporation. Some of the more widely used email systems that ought to be included in an email archive system include: Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Novell Groupwise, First Class, standard POP3, SMTP and Imap protocols.
6. Administrators should coordinate with their in-house legal department and with the department managers of the various business units that the IT organization is responsible for supporting. Those department managers may have additional requirements for email archiving of their employees emails based on their applications used and types of businesses they engage in. And legal departments can also provide guidance in the necessary archival rules and regulations which the company as a whole must comply with.
7. Know what time periods are required by specific regulations when determining how long to keep email messages in the archives. Some companies do not routinely rotate their archived email messages out to the bit bucket and as expected continue to drive up their storage and administrative costs unnecessarily. The more email messages that are stored then the more indexes are required and longer search times than are necessary will occur.
8. Designate someone within the IT organization who is the interface to the legal department. In smaller organizations the legal department will most likely be an outside law firm. Schedule regular quarterly reviews of the laws and regulations specific to your industry that have mandates related to email retention requirements. Some of these compliance laws, regulations, and standards that can impact how email is retained include: the Federal E-Discovery Rules; the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA); the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA); the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX); the PCI Data Security Standard; the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA); the EU Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC; the Basel II Accord and others.
9. Although not considered email, instant messages should also be included as electronic items that can be stored in an email archival system. Within the course of daily activities business communication emails that are received can sometimes start off as instant messages that have been converted into email when the sender was no longer able to communicate with the recipient.
10. The implementation and execution of a good email archival system can save a company much valuable time and money when all contingencies have been taken into account and the planning has been done well.

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10 Email Archival Best Practices and Considerations

Retention Policy Tag types available in Exchange Server 2010.

With email playing a critical role in every business’s operations, protecting it has become more important than ever. One way to do that is by archiving it. Unfortunately, some organizations may find the task daunting.

Why? Messages may be stored all over the place–in .PST files, on SharePoint sites, on backup tapes, with third-party providers and in employees’ personal email accounts.

“With the potential of up to 90 percent of your e-mail residing outside of your Exchange Server, it can be daunting to enforce data retention policies or locate relevant communications when compliance matters arise,” Microsoft observed in a White Paper titled “Addressing E-mail Archiving and Discovery with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.”

Another barrier to email archiving can be worker resistance. Some archiving solutions require both desktop and IT folks to change the ways they do things. Users may need to leave the comfort of their email applications to interact with archived messages. They may also need to learn new clients or applications to work in the new environment. Those things can discourage employee buy-in to the new system.

Not only can those accommodations to change disrupt established workflows of desktop workers, but it can affect an organization’s productivity. For instance, an archival system that doesn’t integrate seamlessly with an existing email setup can disable features in that existing system designed to increase productivity. For example, if the archives were set up outside Exchange, workers might lose the benefits of tools like Conversation View and the “anywhere access” capability of Microsoft’s Outlook Web App.

Similar challenges can confront an IT department. They may have to maintain new add-ons to email and Web apps to adjust to the archive scheme. What’s more, archiving could create a whole new infrastructure that must be made reliable and accessible to users. In addition, search methods that work with an existing system may not work with the new archival system. That can create quite a can of worms when compliance officers, legal departments and human resource people are breathing down an administrator’s neck for data to meet legal or regulatory demands.

Cost can also be a barrier to archiving. If you have to create a parallel infrastructure to integrate an archiving solution into your system, that’s an added cost to your organization. On top of that, you’ll probably need additional training, and you can expect help desk volumes to rise as your workers acclimate themselves to the new way of doing business. Added costs are met with resistance even in the best of times, but that’s even more so now when every business is trying to make IT into a competitive asset by driving down the cost and overhead of infrastructure investments.

With that in mind, Microsoft has added some new features to Exchange Server 2010 that make creating an archival system less burdensome. One of those features is the Personal Archive.

What’s often done by users to preserve their email overflows is create additional .PST files. Those files are stored locally, which makes them difficult to manage. Personal Archive creates a secondary Exchange mailbox linked to each users main mailbox. Email overflows can then be shipped to the Personal Archive box where they can be better managed by a system’s administrators.

A nice feature of Personal Archive is that it doesn’t impose any additional burdens on users. It looks like an ordinary folder in Outlook or Outlook Web App and users can interact with it just as they do with their other folders.

The same is true for your IT crew. Tools they use to manage Exchange–such as Exchange Management Console and PowerShell–can be used with Personal Archive.

Exchange 2010 has also improved how it manages message retention. Policies can easily be implemented that automate deletion and archiving of email.

In addition, Retention Policy Tags can be attached to default folders–all inbox folders, for example, or Sent items–so as messages meet the retention action in a tag, they’re automatically performed. What’s more, users can assign personal retention tags to individual messages, conversations, or custom folders. To make things easier on users, retention policy details are displayed in a message’s preview pane to make it easy for users to keep tabs on what’s in store for a message.

Electronic Discovery is also facilitated in Exchange 2010 with a Legal Hold feature. If a user is placed on legal hold, any edits or deletions he or she makes to emails in his or her primary or Personal Archive account are preserved and stored in a separate recoverable items store that’s inaccessible to the user.

Another addition to Exchange’s e-discovery arsenal is a new multi-mailbox search. What makes this feature nice for IT folks is that they can delegate it to people like compliance officers or corporate legal staff without having to give the searchers full administrative privileges to their networks.

While Microsoft would never sell itself on the archiving capabilities it has packed into Exchange, it appears to recognize that not all good ideas originate in Redmond. It’s also built into Exchange 2010 ways for other software makers to add the software’s archiving, retention and discovery capabilities.

“There are likely many reasons your organization is seeking new and better ways to preserve and discover the critical business communications conducted over e-mail,” Microsoft noted in its White Paper. “Whether your motivation is to lower your storage costs, address regulatory compliance, or meet time tables for legal discovery orders, the integrated e-mail archiving, retention, and discovery features offered in Exchange 2010 can help your organization.”

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Dashing barriers to email archiving with Exchange 2010

The Outlook Personal Folders file (PST) had its day.  It was once the ultimate or perhaps only solution to reducing the cost of storing old emails within the Exchange server database.

Those days are largely gone.  Exchange servers can scale up to much larger database sizes than they could 10 years ago.  Disk and tape storage is cheap, and emails themselves are getting larger and larger.  And enterprise email archiving is efficient, cost effective, and even comes built in to the latest version of Exchange Server.

The benefits of the PST format are now close to nil, while all of the problems remain.  PST files are single-user access only, can’t be indexed or easily searched, are sensitive to corruption when they get larger or are being accessed over networks, and consume more space due to their general inefficiency.

But many organizations have a lot of archived emails still stored in PST files.  Moving to a new Exchange server doesn’t magically solve that problem.  The question is what should you do about all those PST files?

Do Nothing

The least effort, but also least effective solution is to simply do nothing.  Draw a line in the sand and leave all those PST archives as is, but begin archiving to a proper email archiving solution from this point forward.

A serious downside of this is that you can’t reclaim all that wasted disk space that the PSTs are using up.

Import to Exchange Server

The tools to import PST files into mailboxes have been around for a long time.  The upside of this option is that it gets the data back into a server database where it can then be archived off to a proper email archiving solution.

The downside is that you risk bloating your Exchange databases in the process.  You might also make a mess of people’s inboxes if the imports are not directed to the right mailbox folders.

Import to Email Archives

Any good enterprise email archiving solution includes tools for importing PST files into the archive database.  The advantage of this option is that the data goes straight into the archives, is indexed and searchable, and doesn’t negatively impact the Exchange Server in the process.

PST Discovery

In either of the import scenarios above one of the big challenges is discovering all of the PST files on the network and correctly matching them up to mailbox users.  This is relatively easy when PST files are in a standard location such as the user home drive, but more complicated if they are stored in shared folders on the network or on PCs.

Discovery is also problematic on PCs because they can be offline at any time of the day, unlike servers which tend to run 24×7.  Custom scripts and third party file system analysis tools can assist with this, but the process will still be labour intensive.

Unfortunately the end users are not likely to be too much help identifying and locating their own PST files, as it’s not a concept they all fully understand.

Preventing PSTs from Returning

At some stage when the PST import challenge has been met the administrator will want to implement measures to prevent PST files returning to the network.  Fortunately this is fairly simple with Group Policy settings for Outlook, and File Server Resource Manager tools for Windows servers that can be used to implement file screening.

Though there is some effort involved to do it right, ridding the network of PST files is beneficial in the long term.

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What to do With Those PST Files

On more than one occasion I have worked with a customer whose email archiving strategy could be stated like this.

“When people stop working for us we never, ever delete their mailbox.”

As you might guess from the title of this post, that is not really “email archiving”.  You could call it “email keeping”, but I would put it as “creates more problems than it solves”.

If your email archiving strategy is to have no strategy at all, and that’s a deliberate decision by your organization, then consider some of the problems that you are creating.

• Every mailbox you keep adds to the size of the database, which therefore consumes more disk space, and more backup media
• Larger databases take longer to back up, and longer to recover if there is a problem
• Every mailbox you keep is an active mailbox that can potentially continue to receive emails, increasing your storage needs at a rate faster than necessary
• Every mailbox you keep is also an active user account, leaving a potential attack vector for hackers or disgruntled former staff
• When the time comes to migrate to a new email server, the amount of data to move is that much larger
• Keeping emails in mailboxes on an Exchange server (prior to Exchange 2010 which relatively few organizations have moved to yet) does not make them easily auditable

Email Archiving Solutions

A proper email archiving strategy can be conceived and executed with the right archiving solution.  Here are some of the ways that email archiving can be implemented.

• 100% of inbound/outbound email is journaled and archived at the time of transit for historical record.  This can be done to meet legal or regulatory compliance requirements if necessary.
• Email items that exceed a certain age threshold are removed from mailboxes into the archive store.  This is one method for keeping mailbox sizes down.
• Mailboxes that reach a certain “watermark” or size also have their oldest items removed to the archive store, even if they are not yet old enough.  This also helps keep overall mailbox sizes down.
• Mailboxes for inactive users are sent to the archive store and removed from the server entirely.  This allows email for former staff to remain accessible without impacting the email server.
• The archive store is in one or two centralized locations, which consolidates email archives down to as few main data centers as possible regardless of the number of actual email servers in operation.
• The archive store is end user-accessible, secure, and searchable for easy access to archive items for both users and auditors.

The cost to implement these types of solutions is often less than the ongoing costs of maintaining all of that data within the production email servers.  And instead of creating problems, a genuine email archiving strategy creates solutions and improves the email environment for everyone.

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When Email Archiving Isn’t Really Email Archiving

IT managers must account for many demands on their time and resources. Storage is always an issue and having to estimate the growth needs of the company and all the various departments can be a time-consuming and sometimes thankless job.

Estimating email storage needs can be started by making assumptions about the average size in bytes that attachments will require, the hours of day that the email servers will be the busiest and the number of users per email server. Those three variables multiplied together are a good starting point in estimating how much storage to allocate for email servers.

And the same computations can also be used when estimating how much storage to allocate for archiving purposes.

Archiving email messages can save an IT data center in many ways. Some of the reasons for archiving email messages include:

1. Freeing up storage on email servers. Email clients and servers provide a valuable function in any corporation and employees have come to rely on them for not just sending and receiving email messages accompanied with large attachments but also now for collaboration with co-workers. Most email applications now have integrated address books, calendar functions, “to do” lists and some have also included instant messaging as part of their email package.  But with all of these newly added capabilities there has also been a corresponding growth in the storage needs of these more robust applications. IT departments can benefit by reducing their storage needs through the use of archival media.
2. Compliance regulations. Corporations must comply with many regulations within their industries as well as many governmental regulations such as the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002. When companies find themselves having to provide information to various governmental agencies then they have to be able to rely on systems, policies and their IT departments to be able to retrieve the necessary data such as email messages in a timely manner. So IT departments have to stay current and be a part of all corporate discussions involving regulations and industry standards related to communications particularly related to email communications. In addition to SOX there are other government regulations to be made aware of such as: GLBA, SEC, FINRA, HIPAA, BASEL II, FOI, etc
3. Electronic discovery. As of December 1, 2006, Federal amendments went into effect which mandated that companies must be prepared to locate, retrieve, respond to data requests and be able to filter out data not necessary for a litigation action. Such data includes email messages, attachments and calendar entries. These amendments are known as the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and apply to any organization that can be subject to litigation.
4. Disaster recovery. An added benefit of having email messages that are archived is that messages can be retrieved in the event that your primary server goes down and backups are not current. If your archival systems have been set up to replicate data continuously from the primary mail server then your loss of email messages can be almost eliminated.
5. Improved email management. An automated email archival system can improve the management of emails through the use of rules and policies that can be customized for any organization. The time it takes to store, search and retrieve email messages can be greatly improved when performed automatically as opposed to a manual process. Documents which are methodically saved and stored can expeditiously be retrieved and help to avoid potential lawsuits when time constraints are critical particularly in litigious matters.
6. Increased employee productivity. Most employees spend a lot of time managing their email folders and moving data from folders to local storage. All this time managing their email can and would be better spent working on company projects.
7. Reporting and monitoring of email. HR departments cannot enforce the corporate policies without knowing that all communications that occur in an organization are within the proper guidelines as mandated by company policy. Searches can be conducted that look for suspicious patterns within company emails which can be exposed through pattern recognition software and various monitoring tools that are offered as additional services by archival management systems.

An email archival system can help many businesses with their management and storage of all email messages both incoming and outgoing. Storage space savings, increased productivity, regulatory compliance, satisfaction of discovery mandates and guaranteed retrieval are all benefits of a well maintained and administered email archival system.

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7 Reasons for Email Archiving

SearchExchange has written an article on the best and worst practices for email archiving in Exchange Server.  It is a detailed post and I agree with it, however it highlights some best practices that Exchange Server does not do very well on its own without additional systems in place.

PST Files

Outlook PST files are big disk space consumers and are not subject to inspection and retention by archiving systems.  Exchange Server itself cannot prevent the creation of PST files.  This requires the use of other systems such as Group Policy restrictions and file server storage policies.

For environments where PST files have been allowed to proliferate, Exchange Server offers very little in the way of tools to efficiently import the data into archives.  Fortunately there are third party email archive applications that do offer these tools for bulk processing of PST archives.

Separate Archival and DR Storage

The built in archiving available in Exchange Server 2010 does not separate active mailbox data from archive mailbox data.  Both types of data are stored in the same database, subject to the same backup and recovery process.

The best practice is to store and backup archive information on less expensive, high volume storage, and retain it separately (though it can be sent to the same offsite location as the active data).

During a recovery situation the active data can then be restored first as a priority, and archive data restored separately later when normal services have been resumed, because archive data is usually a much lower priority for restore in a DR situation.

Centralize Email Storage

Although Exchange Server environments are typically consolidated into fewer physical locations these days compared to previous years, in larger environments they are still often distributed into regional locations.

Archive information is best kept as centralized as possible, in one primary location with an additional offsite backup copy.  Again the archive features of Exchange Server 2010 limit this capability, because archive data is stored in the same location as the active mailbox.

Third party archiving systems that extract email data from Exchange Server and store it in separate databases are much more capable of the desired centralization.

Maintain Older Readable Versions of Archival Data

The Exchange Server database format has changed several times as the product has iterated through its version history.  Older versions of Exchange Server did not have database portability, which is the feature by which a foreign database can be mounted and read by a different Exchange Server than it was originally connected to.

Restoring very old Exchange data can often mean building a replica of the original Active Directory and Exchange environments in an isolated lab, a situation in which virtualization comes in very handy instead of trying to retain and rely on very old hardware platforms for this task.  Even so it is time consuming and cumbersome to retrieve the data.

On the other hand most third party archive systems store archives in a format independent of Exchange Server database developments, and that data is preserved and retrievable throughout any upgrades of the archiving product itself.

As good as Exchange Server is it is clear that adhering to best practices for email archiving will require organizations to look beyond Exchange at third party products that can integrate and offer more flexibility and reliability over time.

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Email Archiving Best Practices that Exchange Server Doesn’t Do Well

Outlook is used in many corporations by many users and has been for many years. So it is not surprising that problems eventually emerge that are related to file sizes or email file corruptions.

Sometimes when an end user has started Outlook they will report receiving an error code such as 0×80040116. Usually the error message will read, “Outlook.pst can not be accessed – 0×80040116”. If this error message is received then be aware that this could result in a loss of all emails and contacts that have been saved in Outlook. So it is a serious error code message and one that will require immediate attention.

This is one of the reasons why I always encourage email archiving so as to reduce the use of Personal Storage Folder (.pst) files which can be difficult to use. Having a good email archiving solution can also help when data and other critical email files have become corrupted or accidentally damaged and are no longer accessible.

There are other reasons why the error code 0×80040116 can be received. It is also possible that the error code has been generated in response to a file size limitation having been reached. Usually this will occur if a 2GB maximum file size had been encroached while running Outlook 2000 or earlier versions. If this is the case then an administrator should try running a couple of different tools to correct the problem. Some of these tools include: ScanDisk, PST2GB and ScanPST. These tools can be used to reduce the size of the “pst” file below the 2GB limit.

PST2GB was a tool that could be used to truncate from between 25MB to 50MB. Note that the data which was truncated would not be recoverable.
 
The reason this error was produced is because Microsoft Outlook – 2000 and earlier versions – limited the size of Personal Storage Folder (.pst) files and offline folder (.ost) files to 2GB. The unfortunate consequence meant that any changes or edits which resulted in file sizes greater than the 2GB limit would render the file inaccessible. And deleting items from the server mailbox still would result in inaccessible .ost files. This also meant that .ost files would be able to synchronize.

Microsoft fixed this greater than 2GB file size limitation with the release of Microsoft Outlook 2003. But for upgrades, administrators will still need to create new PST files because the older PST files do not get upgraded or converted.

This 80040116 error message may also be produced when a Personal Storage Folder (PST) file cannot be opened. In the case where the Outlook.pst is the file that cannot be opened an administrator can run the Inbox Repair Tool. But if there are no errors reported when the Inbox Repair Tool is run then access to the Outlook.pst file will need to be repaired manually.

If this is the problem then it is probably because some of the Outlook system files have become damaged or corrupted. It can also be that the index for the PST file has become damaged or corrupted in some way.

Note that the Inbox Repair Tool (scanpst.exe) can normally be found in the following location:

C:\program files\Common Files\System\MSMAPI\LocaleID folder

and LocaleID is the locale identifier (LCID) for the installation of Microsoft Office. The LCID for “English – United States” is 1033. You’ll be able to find instruction for how to run “scanpst.exe” in the Outlook Help file.

Another possible solution that should be considered is to check the hard disk for damaged or corrupted areas by running the chkdsk utility. After that, an administrator should run the  scanpst.exe tool to repair and damaged Personal Storage Folder (.pst) files. Scanpst.exe will ask for the locations of the .pst file(s) and prompt for any backups. It will then scan the .pst for errors and attempt to correct any errors that are found.

Other users have reported that if they have Outlook running on their desktop and they are using the Outlook Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) while coding then sometimes the MAPI profile in memory will occasionally get corrupted. This usually happens if calls are being made to MAPI OpenMsgStore() function. The MAPI error code returned is usually 80040116. In this case, the error code 0×80040116 refers to the error message MAPI_E_DISK_ERROR. What needs to be determined at this point is if this is error is being returned from Exchange server or if the error message is being returned from a PST provider.

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Troubleshooting the 0×80040116 Error Code

In another post I discussed the situation of emails that are not sent and are instead stuck in the email outbox. The flip side of that problem is when emails that are in the email inbox seemingly disappear. This can occur after email messages have been read. It can also happen if the preview pane has been opened and the email has not yet been read.

What might be happening is that a filter is being applied that only displays unread messages. Obviously what needs to happen is to either remove the filter or modify it.

If you want to reset to a known state you can also just remove all filters. This is a very easy procedure.

• In Outlook 2000 bring up the View menu and move to the Current View.
• Once there you can click on Customize Current View.
• This will bring up a View Summary dialog box where you can then choose Filter which will pop up the Filter dialog box.
• Here you’ll want to click on Clear All and then click OK or hit enter a couple times to exit the dialog.
• You should now be able to view all email messages whether they are read or unread.

There is another possible cause for disappearing emails. If one of your end users has managed to set Outlook so that email delivery is pointed at a personal folder file such as a pst file then this can have the undesirable consequence of disappearing email.

If you have installed Outlook with the Corporate or Workgroup option then this will support the use of Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) services. This is important because it will allow you, as an administrator, to set the delivery target as your mailbox. You do not want a personal folders file set as the delivery target when you are running Outlook 2000 while viewing the inbox on the Exchange Server. You can set the delivery location by going to the Tools menu and clicking on Services. Next, click on the Delivery tab and check that “Deliver new mail to the following location” has your mailbox as the target location. If everything looks good then click OK or just hit enter.

If you suspect that it is your Rules or Rules and Alerts that is causing the disappearing email problems then you’ll have to go back and double check the logic and make the necessary corrections.

As a precaution you should also backup your email and contacts. You can then set up your account again and perform an import all. Then go back and recheck your Inbox. If this doesn’t correct the problem you can then try and uninstall followed up with a reinstall including all updates as required.

Another option you have is to use the Outlook Inbox Repair Tool to fix any questionable or corrupted files. You must first identify the .pst file(s) you wish to repair. Obtain the full pathname and then run the Inbox Repair Tool and input the pathname to the .pst file(s) you wish to correct. You can run this tool by clicking on the Start button, pull right on Programs or All Programs, pull right on Accessories, pull right on System Tools, and then click on the Inbox Repair Tool. Follow the wizard steps to repair the questionable file(s).

In previous posts I have strongly recommended implementing a routine email archiving practice for all email administrators. Email archiving can be used to recover from corrupted folders and files. It is much easier to work with than having to repair corrupted folders and .pst files.

Another diagnostic step you can take is to set up a new profile to see if you are able to view those “disappearing” emails. You can export your folders and email messages from the old profile and into the new one. This procedure will sometimes be enough to enable your end user to view his “disappearing” emails. Again, another good reason for email archiving and regular backups.

You should also go back and check your View settings. Verify that your ‘Views’ are set to allow viewing of all messages. An end user may have mistakenly changed the setting to view only unread email messages.

Now if you are using Microsoft Outlook 2007 it is known to have a feature that can block attachments that are considered unsafe. This can have an adverse effect on viewing email messages. The attachments that are blocked will depend on different factors that include configuration settings and policies all controlled and set  up by an administrator. Each client can have different implementations so an administrator will have to check the specific client that is having trouble with attachments.

This is where it gets interesting. An administrator or someone on their team will have to write some code that will allow an administrator to check if a particular attachment is being blocked. The code that will allow you to check on specific email attachments is called the IAttachmentSecurity application programming interface (API).

The IAttachmentSecurity API will allow your program to use the IsAttachmentBlocked function. Using this function will allow you to determine whether a particular attachment is blocked. Blocked files – attachments in this case – are not displayed by Outlook 2007.

Using all of the above diagnostic steps outlined in this post will allow an email administrator to correct most any disappearing email problems.

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How to prevent emails disappearing from the inbox

So you’re thinking of acquiring a new email archiving tool and need to craft an acquisition and implementation strategy. Here are some things you may want to consider.

Regulations, rules, requirements and product warranties can make buying archiving tools a minefield. By consulting with your corporate legal and compliance people, as well as your company’s business managers, you can get an idea about where those mines are buried. Moreover, you can use your efforts to educate yourself about what requirements must be met by your new tools to build support and acceptance among your legal and compliance people.

When garnering information from legal and business colleagues, it’s important not to lose sight of your role as a technology advocate. While it’s critical to know what your new archiving tools must do to meet compliance and warranty demands, it’s also crucial that those unschooled in the intricacies of storage management understand basic concepts, such as the distinction between backups and archiving and the hard and soft costs attached to storage.

Keep in mind that your new archiving tools need to do more that meet compliance requirements if they’re going to be accepted by your users. After all, you don’t want to trade one headache–jumping through compliance hoops–for another–a disgruntled user base that sees your new technology as an impediment to its doing its job.

The obvious way to get your users to buy in to a technology is to obtain one that’s as friendly as possible. When introducing a new system, many times “friendly” is just another word for familiar. A system that allows users to interact with something they’re familiar with–Lotus Notes, for instance, or Microsoft Outlook–will calm their anxiety about adopting something new.

Remote access to email archives has become increasingly important not only to road warriors but also to an organization’s rank and file who may be working from home as well as in the office. You should take that into consideration when evaluating new archiving tools. The last thing you want to happen after installing a new system is to have frustrated users creating caches on their office computers where they’re squirreling away copies of their emails because it’s the only way they can see their past messages when they’re away from the office.

Because every day there are reports of court cases decided on emails acquired through legal discovery, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that anything electronically stored on a company’s computers is fair game for legal beagles. Moreover, regulators make no distinction between emails and unstructured data when they go hunting for information at a business. Unstructured data–data outside the email umbrella–can account for some 80 per cent of the bits and bytes stored on a company’s servers, personal computers and laptops. You need to take that into account when reviewing new archiving tools. They need to support archiving of multiple data types, such as instant messages, telephone logs and calendar items.

It’s also important when considering archival tools to consider how–once they’re in place– they will help you enforce system policies. For example, it’s crucial–although it won’t make you or your system popular–to avoid exceptions to archiving policies. There may be some political gain in giving in to a senior executive who wants his or her email account exempt from policy because he or she is disgruntled about the system’s purge cycle or is displeased with the way a system displays archived messages, but when the company gets embroiled in litigation and an opposing counsel starts raising questions about why policies weren’t followed, chances are you’ll be left hanging from a flag pole twisting in the wind alone.

Another policy you’ll want to implement is control of email stubs. You’ll want to trash stubs every 90 to 180 days. Retaining the stubs for too long can impact your system’s performance and the daily irritation of hearing a chorus of “Why is the system so slow?” wherever you go. Since not all archival products dump the stubs when files reach the end of their retention period, that’s a feature you may want to make sure is included in your new archival tool.

Finally, you’ll want to thoroughly vet how a potential archiving system will handle copies of local email files. These files are commonly stored in PST files for Microsoft Exchange and NSF for IBM Notes. Those files are scattered throughout your organization on users’ computers and can be a nightmare for your retention program. Not only is finding those files a horror show when an opponent’s lawyers appear on the doorstep during the discovery process but the information in them can be ticking time bombs. Some systems allow you to block the creation of such files, but if that’s done, you’ll want to make sure your archiving software can accommodate your users’ legitimate needs to access their historical emails.

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Tips when making email archiving choices

By now, every business knows that they need to archive their emails, for convenience, as well as for compliance, e-discovery, and disaster recovery purposes. But once archived, how long do you need to keep them?

There’s really no fixed answer, as is often the case when lawyers are involved. But what’s most important is that there is a written policy about data retention, and that it is followed to the letter, documented, and has an audit trail. The reason for this is clear. Suppose for example, that you are subject to a lawsuit, and opposing counsel has demanded records pertaining to a certain subject. You provide records going back two years. But you have no written policy on data retention. Guess what? Even if the records you provide show no evidence of your guilt, you still lose by default. That is of course, assuming that your opponent has a competent lawyer. The logic behind this is that since you have no retention policy, you may have deleted older emails that showed your liability. 

Now suppose that you do have a written retention policy that says you archive all emails for two years. But, there’s no formal audit trail that shows when those archives are accessed. Again, you lose. Opposing counsel will argue that without an audit trail, there is no reason to believe that you haven’t gone in and erased the evidence! Oh, those tricky lawyers.

Now suppose that you have a long-standing, written retention policy that says you archive all emails for two years, and you do have an audit trail. There is an email that shows you’re guilty, but it’s three years old and long gone. Guess what? You win! Tricky you!

When you’re creating that retention policy, make sure to get input from every stakeholder. It’s not always necessary to archive every email for the same period of time. Your policy may state for example, that emails in the Legal department be archived for three years; Accounting for two years; and Marketing for one year.

Your retention policy should also include a paragraph for putting a “legal hold” on any email that may be near the end of the retention period, if you have any reason to believe that it may be needed in the future.

Lastly, is it necessary to archive everything? In general, yes, but keep in mind that spam and advertisements will only clog up your archives, and do not need to be included. Take every effort to eradicate your spam email before the archiving process.

And above all, remain consistent! Those tricky lawyers will look for evidence that you may have deleted an email ahead of schedule–even if it was spam–and will use that to try to prove that you don’t follow policy.

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Email archives, retention periods, and tricky lawyers

The upcoming release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 includes new email archiving features.  Previously the domain of third party add-on products from various software vendors, this marks the first time it has been built in to the Exchange Server product itself.

Given the long and proven history of some of the third party solutions one wonders whether Microsoft’s first attempt at a built in archiving feature will compare favorably.  Let’s take a look at what we know so far about archiving in Exchange Server 2010.

Exchange Server 2010 Archiving

There are a few pre-requisites for Exchange Server 2010 archiving to function.  Firstly, it requires Enterprise CALs for the users that will be archive enabled.  In addition, the archive mailbox is only viewable using Outlook 2010 (due for release sometime after Exchange 2010), which means Outlook 2007 and prior versions will not be able to see it, although it is visible using the Exchange 2010 Outlook Web App.

The archiving feature can be enabled on a per-mailbox basis.  Once enabled it creates a second mailbox for the user, the archive mailbox.  Mailbox items can be moved to the archive mailbox either manually or via the use of Retention Policies set by the administrator.

Unlike the primary mailbox, the archive mailbox cannot be cached by Outlook for offline access.  This reduces the file size of the cached OST file on the end user’s computer; however, this benefit is somewhat redundant because the OST file format in Outlook 2007 SP2 and Outlook 2010 has been greatly optimized and will now run quite efficiently at large sizes such as 10 gigabytes.Although the archive mailbox is a separate mailbox it is still contained within the same mailbox database as the user’s primary mailbox.

Comparison to Third Party Archiving Products

I’m going to compare Exchange 2010 archiving to third party products in general terms rather than specifically compare different products feature by feature.  Even in general terms some of the points are quite valid and may give pause to customers considering deploying Exchange 2010’s archiving feature.

Firstly the Enterprise CAL requirement means additional costs.  For a smaller organization hoping to utilize a built-in archiving feature for Exchange this additional cost can be more than the licenses for a third party product.  Unless the organization is also planning to use other features that the Enterprise CAL provides it may be wiser to choose another product.

The decentralized model of archive mailboxes is also a potential concern.  Third party archiving products offer the capability to draw all archives into a central location where they are more manageable.  Exchange 2010’s model keeps archives distributed around all of the branches of an organization where the mailbox servers are located.

The limitation of placing the archive mailbox in the same mailbox database is also somewhat disappointing.  Archives by their nature are less frequently accessed and are perfect for low cost storage.  Unfortunately with Exchange 2010 the archive mailboxes can’t be placed in a different database on slower, cheaper disk.  That said, Exchange 2010 has dramatically improved its disk performance which may mean the databases are already stored on lower cost disk.  This will vary depending on the scale of the organization.

It is also unclear as to whether the archive mailboxes are simply included with the regular Exchange mailbox backups, or if they can be separated out and backed up less often.  Again an advantage of third party products is that once items are archived they don’t necessarily need to be backed up nightly within the archiving product.

Retention and discoverability are two areas where Exchange 2010 seems to get it right.  Archives are searchable by non-IT staff (e.g. HR, Legal) via an easy to use control panel, and items of interest can be copied elsewhere for further analysis.  Furthermore, a “legal hold” can be placed on individual mailboxes or an entire organization to prevent any item deletion by end users.

Summary

Exchange Server 2010 is due for release within a few weeks and until then the full archiving feature cannot be properly assessed and understood.  However based on current information it may not be the inexpensive built-in solution they are hoping for.

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Is Exchange Server 2010 Archiving a Hit or Miss?

Have you ever received error messages about running out of memory when using Outlook?

There are many reasons for why this will happen. Most of the time, I find myself closing down applications on my screen to free up memory. Sometimes you will find that your email clients are using up system resources on the computer. You may see the following error show up repeatedly:

Task ‘private email of company – Sending and Receiving’ reported error (0×8007000E): ‘Out of memory or system resources. Close some windows or programs and try again.’

I’m going to explain a couple ways for you to avoid this issue.

Oftentimes just increasing the swap space or adding memory will solve this problem. It is not unusual in a corporate environment for <dot>  PST files to grow into the gigabytes. Large attachments saved in your end user’s files can cause this to happen. That’s why it’s important to have set limits on how much email can be stored per user.

You might want to try setting up a tiered limit system where email file storage is based on the end user’s work needs. For example, code developers often need large amounts of disk space for their programs and will sometimes use their email space to send and receive large chunks of source code. Having an email archiving system can help limit the amount of email data that accidentally is left in your users email <dot> PST files.

It is always possible that you have a virus but if you keep your system patched and current with antivirus software this should not be a problem. A good practice is to run scans on a routine basis.

And then there is the case that you are having hardware related errors which can cause out of memory errors to occur. It could be bad or failed memory that caused the error(s). 

As strange as it may sound just setting Outlook as your default mail program can also fix the problem.

There is also the scenario where you are getting a MAPI error. It will show up as “MAPI: ShowForm Causes Out-Of-Memory Error” from Outlook.

Working with forms, and especially if you are displaying multiple Outlook forms by  running the IMAPISession::PrepareForm and IMAPISession::ShowForm functions in a loop, can cause errors to happen on slower computers. Initially your ShowForm execution will work but then you will find that additional calls to ShowForm result in the following error message when you are trying to add attachments using drag and drop functionality:

“Out of memory or system resources. Close some windows and try again.”

What can happen is that there is code that is producing a bad reference count. The result is that an attempt to create an internal object will fail and return an error code. The error code gets interpreted as an out of memory condition.

Invoking the ShowForm function happens when a call is made which causes the corresponding form server to be loaded that is related to the registered form.  A reference will be added, by MAPI, to the form server when it executes the form. After the form is closed, the reference is released by MAPI. The form server will shut down after no more references are left.

You might have a form that is registered to use Outlook as its form server. Using it will get your message displayed but when you close it this will also cause Outlook to shut down. It is in this shutting down process that Outlook cannot accept calls to open a new form that leads to your Out of Memory or Resources problem. The problem is related to a timing issue. If another process attempts to invoke another form, while Outlook is in a shut down mode, then MAPI will interpret this state as a failure caused by limited memory. The trick is to allow enough time for Outlook to shut down completely before attempting to open another form. Simple enough but often just an afterthought from an application point of view.

As an administrator you might want to preface applications that your end users might run, which would cause any ShowForm calls to be made, with a script or shell which checks first to make sure that Outlook has shutdown.

Lots of times in corporate environments the IT department is running applications that have been home grown – developed either on-site or by consultants. These are the applications that should be reviewed first while you, as an administrator, still have some control and access to the programmers.

As an administrator you should verify that any applications which open multiple forms, that are using Outlook as their forms server, remains in memory when the forms are being displayed. One solution is to have the applications create an Outlook.Application object. Outlook will load and continue to run until the Outlook.Application object is released. This will remove the timing issues associated with the Out of Memory errors that were previously experienced.

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Outlook Out Of Memory Errors

Occasionally your end users will open up their emails or personal folders and make the horrific discovery that their files have seemingly disappeared. They try a couple more times and then, after concluding that one of their co-workers has planted a virus or hacked into their email, they go bursting into your cubicle, panicking and pleading with you to please find their email!!!

Lucky for you, you know a thing or two about a thing or two

There are a couple of reasons why email disappears from email folders. One of those reasons is that the <dot> Personal Store (PST) folder for the default email has accidentally been deleted by a user for whatever reasons. It’s possible that the “Del” key was accidentally hit or the Shift plus Del key combination may have been mistakenly chosen. It’s also possible that the Deleted Items Folder was emptied out. And there will probably be the suspicion that someone other than the owner did remove it intentionally. So checking the logs will be an appropriate course of action once you – the administrator – have restored some office sanity.

And with viruses as common as they are today there always exists the possibility that Microsoft Outlook emails were lost due to a virus attack. Sometimes just the action of compacting a <dot> PST file can cause corruption due to the 2GB <dot> PST file size limit. If the <dot> PST file header is corrupted this can also lead unreadable emails.

Remember to never compact your <dot> PST files or save any new data after you have lost deleted any emails. You must first try to recover the deleted emails. Make sure that you close Microsoft Outlook and then run your recovery software to find your lost or deleted <dot> PST files and emails so you can recover them.

A missing <dot> PST folder can have other repercussions as well. Such as when the user goes to open Outlook Express they find that they are unable to open it unless they add a new user email account because the default <dot> PST email folder cannot be found.

One of the other actions you can perform as an administrator is to check to see if there are any <dot> PST files where they are supposed to located.

For example, the default location of a <dot> PST file in Windows 2000, XP or 2003 is:
(drivename):\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook

And the default location of a <dot> PST file in Windows Vista is:
(drivename):\Users\user\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook

Rest assured that your <dot> PST file(s) are not permanently deleted. They’re just marked as being deleted. Free space is opened up for more data to be stored. Just remember to not compact that PST file until you’ve attempted to recover it.

There used to be a problem with Outlook 2002 archived file data when the end user tried to open a <dot> PST file with Windows Explorer. It would appear as if the archived email file had been lost.

Using Windows Explorer on a computer running Windows 2000 to open a <dot> PST file, containing archived data, would result in an error message similar to the following:

“An error occurred in the folder shortcuts file (.fav). Outlook will re-create the default folder shortcuts. “

Clicking OK would result in a second message being displayed:

“Outlook could not save the updated folder shortcuts information. Check to make sure there is sufficient disk space and that the file path.pst is not marked read-only. Another attempt to save will be made after next change or when you exit.”

At this point if your end user clicked OK it would result in the file size shrinking rather dramatically. And the worst part was that the archived information disappeared.

What was happening is that when the <dot> PST file was opened under th0se conditions – running Windows Explorer and Windows 2000 – it would cause the file to opened in an editable state and thus, to Outlook, make it unusable.

The way to get past this problem is to use the Data File Management command in Outlook’s File menu to open the <dot> PST file for viewing.

You can also try running an email inbox repair tool – such as Microsoft  “Scanpst.exe” – but there are email recovery tools and software on the market that are much more robust and include advanced algorithms specifically designed to recover lost data from Microsoft Outlook <dot> PST email archive files.

As you can see, relying on your PST files as your only source of backups can be pretty risky. This is one of the reasons why email archiving software tools have evolved to add additional layers of protection to your email management strategy.

Having an email archiving tool in your backup and recovery strategy can protect you, as an administrator, and your company from the many problems that go with litigation and discovery, regulatory compliance, email retention policies, lifecycle management and more. Should the need arise; you will be able to confidently reproduce archived emails, both internal and external, with a robust email archiving system in place.

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Recover Lost Or Deleted Email Files

Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger of California signed the state’s Electronic Discovery Act, which is effective immediately. An earlier version had been vetoed for what was said to be budgetary reasons. The Act lays out procedures for discovery of electronically stored information in California. As is the case with any piece of legislation, especially legislation from California, the actual text is quite lengthy, but it’s similar to the most recent revisions of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. For most data centers, there is no big cause for alarm, since the law doesn’t deviate much from the Federal e-discovery standard.

Under the new legislation, when somebody requests electronically stored information (ESI), they may specify the format they would like to receive it in. If the party doesn’t specify a format, then the data should be produced in the same format that it was originally created, or in another format that is “reasonably usable.” It’s only necessary to produce the documentation in a single format.

If the data is not what the Act terms “reasonably accessible,” it is possible to refuse the request if it causes undue burden or high cost. But it’s not enough to just say “I can’t get to it”–if you want to claim that the data is inaccessible, you have to state specifically why, and you have to identify the sources and types of data that can’t be accessed. The burden of proof that the data is not accessible falls on the party from which the data is being requested. This is of course a very subjective rule, and an email admin managing archives should be prepared to produce in any event. So long as the requesting party has a more expensive lawyer, the point of whether it is “reasonably accessible” could be debated endlessly, or until your company runs out of money, whichever comes first.

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California governor signs new e-discovery act

The administrator may appropriately be tasked with administering, or at least overseeing, the process of email archiving, if for no other reason than the fact that end-users are not likely to do it themselves. The process of archiving emails, if left to individual end-users, would be chaotic at best. Uniform standards must apply, and archiving needs to be done according to a rule-based procedure; without such a rule-based procedure, the enterprise risks falling out of compliance with one or more legislative mandates.

But there are two pieces to the archiving puzzle: Putting things into it, and taking things out of it. The first part can be largely automated and done according to a set of rules that specify that emails get archived after a certain period of time. But as for the other end—searching the archives—that’s another story entirely.

The process of e-discovery for example, can be a nightmare, and lawyers have been known to cast a very wide net. The results can easily be tens of thousands of emails or more. Ultimately, this needs to be the domain of the legal department, who will be better equipped than IT staff to conduct a search designed to yield usable results.

But besides legal e-discovery, nearly every department will have a need for retrieval at some point. It is simply a waste of resources to require the IT department to conduct these retrievals. In the old days, it was necessary. Archives were kept on tape, on a shelf in a back room. The tape had to be physically retrieved and then loaded and read. But we’ve gone beyond that (hopefully) today.

Retrieval can take one of many different forms. Of course, when end users store their own emails locally in folders or PST files, they can do it themselves, but the process is decidedly clunky and inefficient and may be error-prone. The process instead needs to be rules-based, centralized, and automated. Exchange allows for easy integration with third-party services that allow for this.

In establishing a search and retrieval function, the IT department should implement a solution that gives end-users easy access, but access that is controlled with authentication and authorization to guarantee continued compliance with security requirements. Furthermore, the end-user interface should be web-based so that access can be gained from any browser, and lastly, the search function should be made efficient by allowing searches to be conducted not only from the subject header, but from the content as well. From a compliance perspective, most regulations will require an audit trail as well, and it will also be necessary to choose a solution that will log access.

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Self-service retrieval

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.

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Getting ready for disaster: Dress rehearsals

Implementing an email archiving solution can solve a great many problems, but you’ll get a great many questions when you’re in the planning stage–not the least of which is, “Why do we need to do this?”

Here are just a few reasons to start with:

1. Discovery response. Your legal department will love it. Lawyers love paperwork—even electronic paperwork. It’s their lifeblood, their currency. In the process of legal investigations, your legal department will no doubt want to retrieve all email message that are relevant to a particular case or issue. Those email records may be vital as evidence, and so long as they are properly stored with standard security safeguards, they are admissible in court.
2. Compliance. A host of government regulations now govern IT security, privacy, and retention of documents. To comply with these regulations, a proper archiving system is often necessary, as standard backup may not be adequate in terms of security.
3. Disaster Recovery. You may have ready access to backed up data files, but without those important emails—which often contain valuable and important information—you will still be lost. Email is a major asset to the business—and having access to them from an off-site secure redundant server is a critical part of disaster recovery.
   
4. Server performance. A mail server can get overloaded in a surprisingly short period of time, especially in an environment where emails with very large attachments are sent on a regular basis. An automated process for offloading emails from the email server, while keeping them easily retrievable, will help keep that in check and keep down costs
5. Reduce or eliminate reliance on PST files. PST files can become corrupted, and may lead to several problems in terms of access and searchability; shifting to another method will make email archiving easier for both end-users and IT staff alike.
6. More efficient search and retrieval. Saving old emails is pointless if it takes hours to find the right one and retrieve it. Proper archiving, as opposed to use of PST files or just standard backup, will provide better tools for searching and retrieving important old emails.
7. End-user convenience. Without a system in place, end-users will resort to simply deleting emails that need to be saved, keeping very large inboxes that rapidly become unwieldy, or attempting to sort old emails into multiple subfolders, which are not searchable and not chronological as a whole.
8. Email Admin convenience. The archiving system will provide an easier path to email backup, and provide for faster network backup time because of lighter email servers.
9. Security. Without an archiving system, the security of older emails may be compromised. Individual inboxes may not be secured, and employees may resort to offloading emails onto external data such as optical disks or thumb drives, which are open to easy theft.
10. HR management. When an employee leaves under unfavorable conditions, it has happened that they trash hard drives or erase data on their computers—an archiving system ensures that their email records are kept in a safe place.

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Top Ten Reasons to Archive Email

PST (Personal Storage Tables) can be a nuisance and a cause of some difficulties. There are plenty of how-to’s out there on how to manage them, tweak them, and manipulate them, but the best strategy of all is to avoid them altogether.

The PST files can be stored either on the Exchange server or locally. The immediate advantage of local storage of the PST files is that it provides an easy and readily accessible location for old emails. But although a great many email environments are set up for local storage of PST files, it goes without saying that the local storage option is a bad idea that offers very little in the way of protection against disaster, loss, or attack.

However, with more companies falling under the purview of one or more compliance-related legislative mandates, usage of PST files must be revisited. If there is a retention requirement that calls for storing emails for a certain period of time, it’s pretty easy to get around that requirement. Electronic discovery may also be a problem if PST files are used and stored locally, even temporarily.

By itself, although PST files are password-protected, this protection is somewhat flimsy, and there are numerous hacker tools available that can be used to easily remove the password on a PST.

Rather, the better option is a third-party archiving solution that works with Microsoft Exchange which delivers superior data security, as well as non-local storage that is readily accessible by authorized users.

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Reduce dependency on PST files

A couple of previous corporate situations in France and Japan highlight the importance for companies to implement archiving systems. Email is the primary communication source for companies being able to track historical information. With both the Kerviel-Société Générale and Livedoor scandals, employee email and instant message archived records were critical to the companies as the scandals unfolded. This included executive communications, as well.

Both situations are reminders that these days electronic messages are a constant way of life for all business professionals. For company self preservation, it is important to keep track of commitments employees have made or have not been making on behalf of the organization. This is where archiving systems facilitate in maintaining message communications, while protecting a company’s business  interests.  As innovative new technologies, like the iPhone, move messaging outside the constraints of the traditional corporate IT infrastructure, an organization must strive to capture all instances of employees’ business related messages. This requires that archiving be taken out of employee’s hands.

A fake email supposedly coming from Deutsche Bank led the French bank Société Générale to realise that something was not kosher with transactions being made by a junior trader, Jérôme Kerviel. An investigation was initiated when bank management concluded Mr. Kerviel had exposed it to 50 billion euros of potential liability.  All of Jérôme’s messages stored by the bank came under scrutiny.

The New York Times previously reported “One top Société Générale executive informed investigators that Mr. Kerviel rarely used his office e-mail account. In 12 months he had only sent 60 messages from his corporate email account.  Apparently instant messaging was Mr. Kerviel’s primary business communication method of choice.” Referencing whatever electronic records that were available, the bank quickly responded to minimize its liability by making good on Kerviel’s outstanding trading positions.

During a thorough investigation, a key question that needed to be answered was whether Kerviel acted alone. The bank examined thousands of messages stored from the bank’s internal instant message system. This included communications some between Kerviel and a suspected accomplice, Moussa Bakir,  who was an employee at a company called Fimat. In one message that warranted particular attention, Mr. Bakir communicated to Kerviel, “You have done nothing illegal in terms of the law.” And at least one e-mail suggested that an assistant inside the bank had also helped Kerviel.

The outcome of the investigation was critical to the bank and its investors, as responsibility for the scandal was distributed. Had the bank not been archiving email and instant messages, its investigation and steps taken to minimize the damage would have been seriously hampered.

In the instance with Livedoor, an Internet service company in Japan, email message archives saved the company.   Livedoor, a popular web portal in Japan, became caught up in an accounting scandal that led to criminal prosecution of several executives, including the CEO. Executive email records figured prominently in the investigation. As an example, archived email messages indicated Livedoor executives deceived other business entities by offering to purchase stock the company already owned.

Although this situation gave Livedoor a big black eye, the company still survived through it. As an entity separate from the individuals who serve as executives, the company regrouped and pressed ahead as a viable competitor in the Japanese Internet market. It installed a new CEO who said, “When you’re a company with 2,000 staff and 200,000 shareholders, people expect some corporate responsibility.”

Livedoor received much unwarranted publicity from this situation.  A hard copy of an email circulated in Japanese politics pointing to evidence there was an attempt by the firm’s former CEO to use company funds for bribing top Japanese politicians. The company conducted an internal investigation of its records.  From that investigation the new CEO was able to publicly express skepticism that such a bribe took place. Archived records also allowed the company to prove the bribe allegations were not true.

So retrievable electronic communication records positioned the new CEO to deflect suspicion away from the company.  The bribe email was later proven to be fake. This scenario highlights how today’s competitive business environment dictates companies preserve email. Just as electronic archives can inform an enterprise about its commitments, they can protect it from false accusations and even eBlackmail.

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Archiving is Insurance against eBlackmail