Like so many of you out there, I upgraded my Apple device to iOS 5 recently, and with that I found that I could get a free email account in the iCloud, an @me.com email address. My immediate response was to go “heck yeah!” and sign up for it. I did, added it to my other devices, and only then did I stop to think for a moment about what I did. That made five, yes, that’s right, FIVE email accounts that my phone would check every so many minutes to interrupt my day with yet another notification that I must check to see what someone sent me. That’s now FIVE email accounts I have to worry about filtering for spam, and securing with unique usernames and passwords, and that I will have to search through when, six months after reading an email and remembering only vaguely what it was about, need to find it again.

But wait, there’s more. How many instant messaging accounts do you have? I have one on each of the main public services. Since my Gmail account is already in the five above, that means I have a Yahoo, a Hotmail, and an AIM account that are capable of receiving email. I also have LinkedIn, and Facebook; each of those is a place that I can receive email, though they don’t have email addresses associated directly with them. I own a few different domains that I’ve registered through Google, so each of those comes with a Google Apps email whether I use it or not. So now I am up to fourteen different mailboxes that I could actually use today. Who knows how many are out there that I haven’t thought about in years, whether on Gmail, or Hotmail, at college, or in various other systems. And I’m pretty sure I have an email address on my personal cell phone, my work cell phone, and as a part of my Internet connection from my ISP.

So I ask myself and you, gentle reader, this very serious question… How many mailboxes do you really need?

This question is distinctly different from how many email addresses to you really need. With aliases, purpose built addresses, addresses you want to use to register for a service and hope to never need again, and all the various distribution lists you might want to have, you might need tens or dozens of email addresses.

What I want to know is how many mailboxes does someone really need, where a mailbox should be considered as something on a distinct system, requiring a distinct set of credentials, and that you will check on a (semi-)regular basis. It can be a web-mail, or POP3, or IMAP system, or something more enterprise targeted like an Exchange or Notes system. Please, leave a comment and let me know how many you have – you can leave as much or as little detail as you wish, but please give me at least the number of personal, and of professional mailboxes you have.

There is more to this post than just an attempt at justifying the ridiculous number of mailboxes that I have by trying to see how many of you are just as bad; I want you to consider whether or not any of those mailboxes you have left out there in the world might be:

a)      A resource drain on someone’s system

b)      A treasure trove of lost information

c)       A security risk.

If you think any of those might be the case, I encourage you to go clean them up. My own homework for this week is to do just that – clean up and close mailboxes that I can get rid of, review the messages that are in there to see if anything is worth keeping, and to forward messages from any that I need to keep in service to a “live” mailbox so that I am more aware of what might be hitting them, like requests to confirm things, password resets to other services; you get the idea.

It’s Time to Stop the Madness

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So you have been tasked with securing your organization’s email services.

There are quite a few guides available on the Internet and in different computer bookstores that can take you through the basics – and if you are ahead of the game you may have already done your homework.

So you have looked at your email server, or servers, and taken the recommended steps of:

• Installing a commercial email security solution,
• Updating the server’s operating system,
• Patching all required software,
• Turning off all unnecessary services,
• Configuring your email server to sit behind the external firewall,
• Encrypting your email storage,
• Setting a back up schedule,
• Testing the recovery portion of your back up,
• Training your users on your company email policies.

Confident that your email services are now secure, you can roll up your sleeves and attack the next item in the pile of projects that is sitting on your desk, right?

Not just so fast. Unfortunately, there is still quite a bit of work to do.

What am I missing?

Like any other computer service, email requires many different users to share information with the email server or cluster of servers. Each user connects via a desktop computer, a laptop, tablet, or smart phone; as result, there is a two way communication going on between them where data is exchanged. Can you see where we are going with this?

That’s right. Even if the servers that drive your company’s email are secured, there still remains that one variable that is often the root of so many security problems – the user.

If just one of those many users connects to the company’s email servers with an unsecured or infected device, it could mean disaster for your organization’s email. Considering the fact that email is still the preferred method of business communication and you could have some serious problems on your hands.

Securing the endpoint

Your company can buy the top of the line security tools, train users until they can recite policies in their sleep and keep everything under a watchful eye, but all it takes is one zero-day vulnerability to be exploited on a device that a user connects to your network with and you can consider yourself compromised.

You see, attackers know that the weakest point in any organization is the user and his or her computer. Servers are often guarded with firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention devices, and diligent operators. The low hanging fruit is the user so that is where the attackers concentrate.

Training is always considered the best way to enforce security in an organization. The thought is that if people are aware of what the threats are and what they can do to stop them, then most attacks can be mitigated. We know that’s not the case. Training and education works, but only so much. Instead of being looked at as the solution, it should be considered a part of a larger plan to stop threats against your email. Other elements of the overall strategy should include:

Check your computers for malware

No solution is going to stop 100 percent of all malicious software from infecting computers on your network. However, having a solution in place that constantly scans your network devices for malicious software is a crucial part of your overall security because believe me, something is better than nothing. However, this means running anti malware software that will be automatically updated. Even better, make sure you can configure the solution so that users can’t opt to postpone the updates.

Update the OS and all software

After you have tested the updates and patches published for your computers’ operating systems and software, make sure that they are installed. Most patches are released to fix problems and plug up exploits found in the software code. Not updating your machines leaves them open to attack.

Update the browser

As email moves to the cloud, it is essential that the browser used in your organization is updated as regularly as any other software. This includes any plug-ins or extensions used by the browser. Even if you are still hosting mail services yourself, websites continue to grow as a method of delivering malware to computers, using a secured browser is essential to protect users from being infected by seemingly harmless sites that they visit.

Email security is not easy. As with any other portion of your infrastructure’s security, it takes diligence, knowledge and skill. However email security cannot be avoided because it is simply too hard of a task to complete. You can certainly look into solutions that help ease the workload and make up for any deficiencies when it comes to this job.

Secure Your Desktop – Protect Your Email

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Advanced persistent threats make email security a necessity

Most email administrators consider security to be a large part of what they do. With so many laws and regulations governing the storage, discovery and retrieval of email messages, security has become a second job to many.

Unfortunately, many administrators either forget, or simply aren’t aware, that securing email requires much more effort than hardening the email servers against attack. In order to fully protect your organization’s email and their contents the mailbox also needs to be defended. Especially when you consider how popular Advanced Persistent Threats are becoming with large cyber crime syndicates who use email not only as a way to harvest sensitive information, but also as a method of attack through phishing and social engineering.

By implementing the following tips into your security plan you can help protect against these, and the many other threats that your organization may face:

Create email policies to regulate the communication of confidential information

Email communication has become second nature in the workplace. It is quick, easy and it gives us a record of our conversation so we can refer back to any information at a later date. However, if the conversation contains sensitive information like login credentials, financials, personal information, and the like, then it can be extremely valuable to anyone who may harvest those emails.

By simply setting up, and enforcing, policies that restrict certain information from being sent via email you can mitigate the damage done if emails are exposed. At the very least, your policy should state that user logins and passwords (and/or PINs) not be communicated via email.

Teach users to encrypt their messages

One of the best analogies I have seen to describe the need for encrypting emails is one that compares email to a postcard. Basically, anyone who comes across it can read the contents if they want. This can be stopped by encrypting emails to prevent eavesdropping.

Encryption is a hard thing for many people. It requires additional steps, training and, in some cases, third-party software (such as PGP) yet it is really the only way to keep your messages private in transit.

Encryption shouldn’t be limited to sending and receiving messages alone. Any email that is stored on a hard drive (think personal folders), a network drive, backup servers or archive systems should also be protected from any prying eyes.

Get rid of old email

A long time ago, storage space was a precious resource. Nowadays inboxes can be easily scaled to hold enormous amounts of data. Unfortunately that provides a greater possibility that an attacker will find something valuable.

Email should be moved, or deleted, when their life cycle is up. Make sure to check with any regulations regarding discovery and archiving before getting rid of the old stuff, but if you combine this with encryption you will be taking great strides to protect older emails.

Practice good network security habits

Make sure that desktops are continually scanned for malware that could possibly expose email login credentials, filter Internet content to protect against malicious websites, understand how to properly use a firewall and update server and client software as needed.

In addition to the employing technology to help secure your email systems you should also consider human factors as well. One of the ways that people first discover that their systems have been compromised is by noticing an anomaly. Be on the lookout for log-ins that just don’t seem right whether it be the IP address, the time of day or even the length of time.

This can be one of the most tedious tasks to undertake when it comes to security but it is by far the most important.

Put the right solutions in place

In many small and medium-sized enterprises, the email administrator alone cannot be as vigilant as he or she would like. Even in organizations where there is team of professionals dedicated to security use necessary security tools to help them do their jobs. Smaller companies need to understand this as well.

By employing technologies that help manage email, backup and recovery, archiving and security, you are plugging the little holes that provide that chink in the armor most attackers are looking for.

No one said that email security is going to be an easy task, but it is one that cannot be ignored just because it’s too hard or it costs too much.

Tips for Better Email Security

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Getting your co-workers to adhere to policies that govern the use of email in the workplace can be tough. Despite your best efforts, email is still used to send jokes, chain letters, pictures, slide shows and other inappropriate content.

For whatever reason, people don’t quite get that not only are email policies in place to protect them and the company brand, but there are consequences for violating these policies. Unfortunately, the only time when people begin to comprehend just how serious email policies are is when it is too late.

To better help your co-workers and employees understand why it is important to adhere to email regulations and company policies, here are a few real life examples that you can use to get the point across:

Sarah Palin

The mistake: Using personal email to conduct business.

Nothing of note was found when her official email archives were released to the press recently but remember back when her personal Yahoo! account was cracked? She had to answer questions regarding the use of her personal email to conduct state business instead of her official account that is subject to laws and regulations regarding public records.

Mark Foley

The mistake: Sending inappropriate messages while intoxicated.

The congressman from Florida was caught up in an email scandal when he sent a message to a former Congressional page requesting a photo. Although the email was sent from his personal account it did open up the floodgates and it was found that he had also sent suggestive text messages to the same young man. Foley later explained that he had a drinking problem and that the messages were all sent when he was intoxicated. After all this surfaced he was told to either resign or he would be expelled from the House of Representatives.

Neal Patterson

The mistake: Expectations that emails are private communications and bad etiquette.

Whenever a paper trail exists there should be no expectation that the communication will remain private. In 2001 Neal Patterson, CEO of the Cerner Corporation, learned this when an email he sent out to his senior staff was leaked.

The email, which berated and threatened managers by stating, “As managers, you either do not know what your EMPLOYEES are doing or you do not CARE. In either case, you have a problem and you will fix it or I will replace you,” caused a 22 percent drop in the company’s stock.

Climate Research Unit, England

The mistake: Confirming a cover-up using email.

Much of the research from the CRU is used by the United Nations for its global climate reports so when an email surfaced from Phil Jones, the head of the CRU, that read, “I’ve just completed Mike’s [science journal] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline,” you can imagine what happened to the credibility of this group.

Galleon Group

The mistakes: Fake emails to cover up security fraud.

Galleon founder, Raj Rajaratnam told employees to create a fake email trail to make it appear to the SEC that some of his recent stock purchases were based on price rather than inside information he had received.

“You just have to be careful, right?” Mr. Rajaratnam told the former Galleon employees in a taped conversation. He later explained that he would send an email asking about a stock “so that we just protect ourselves.”

He was found guilty on 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud and faces sentencing on July 29^th.

Lee Abrams

The mistake: Sending offensive content via his company’s email system.

The chief innovation officer of the Tribune Co. resigned in 2010 because he sent an email memo with a link to a video that he thought was funny. Some of the people who received the email didn’t quite see it in the same light. In fact, they found it offensive and complained. Originally, Abrams was suspended by the company indefinitely but later left his position.

As you can see, and hopefully your co-workers understand, that when it comes to the inappropriate use of email the intent isn’t taken into consideration. Even something that the sender views as harmless often carries the same consequences as something done maliciously.

Email Scandals That Should Make Us Think Twice

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Developments in cloud based computing have shown quite a bit of excitement and promise, especially when it comes to small to medium sized businesses. Those who evangelize the cloud will often cite the many benefits of moving to a cloud based email service. The litany of favorable reasons to examine moving email services off site that are oft quoted fall into line with the reasons used to move to any new technology:

• Ease of scalability
• Ease of software updates
• Email access anywhere
• Better disaster recovery
• Ease of implementation
• And of course, reduced costs

So when a vendor, or even someone in your own organization, throw these at management looking to save money and increase productivity then it seems like the question moves from why should we move to the cloud? to why has it taken us so long to move our email to the cloud?

Is it really that easy?

Cloud based email services make a whole lot of sense for many organizations. By doing a bit of research, you are certain to find at least one case study on how moving your email to the cloud helped someone in your specific industry. Yet even with good reasons and plenty of research to support this decision, nothing should be done without considering every angle because over the years if we have learned one thing, when it comes to IT nothing is risk-free.

So what does an interested SMB need to consider when all the arrows point to moving to the cloud? Let’s take a look.

1. Control

When your email resides on servers that are housed at your location, you are responsible for configuring the software, maintaining the hardware, updating and patching the server(s), cooling the room, etc. But you also have complete control over your email and backups. Moving to the cloud means you are giving up control and possibly ownership. This lack of control can lead to real world problems. For instance, if your organization has a one year deletion policy, is your cloud provider able to adhere to that? Conversely, if you have a no delete policy can this be achieved as well?

A rarer occurrence, but one that has much harsher repercussions is the event that an investigation needs to take place. Will emails be available for forensics when needed? If so, will there be any issues with the chain of custody and proving that the investigation was tamper proof?

2. Availability

Unless you have been living under a rock you are well aware of the attacks against Gmail over the recent months. The decision to move email services to a cloud provider should always be based on how well the provider can ensure that mail servers will deliver an acceptable percentage of uptime. Of course it’s one thing to say that you guarantee 99.9999 percent uptime and quite another to deliver so when a cloud provider makes a claim regarding availability, make sure your IT team speaks with the sales engineers, not just the salesperson, to see what exactly is in place to eliminate things like interruptions and denial of service attacks.

3. Security and Spam Protection

One of the biggest draws to the cloud for email is the fact that the provider will take care of security and anti-spam. Again, this is something that you are entrusting to the provider and giving up control over. If you are unhappy with the amount of spam that gets by the filters, or if the false positive rate is higher than an acceptable rate you can’t simply switch to a different solution.

This should be at the forefront of any discussions you have with potential email service providers. Find out what solutions they have in place and research them just as if you were buying the protection for your own servers.

4. Cost

Of course cost is always the number one reason SMBs look to the cloud. It is hard to find anyone who will say that a cloud based solution isn’t less expensive in the long run than running, securing and maintaining your own email servers. However the numbers may not always equal the level of service you expect. Costs may not always be transparent. A cloud provider may charge extra for business grade anti-spam protection. Perimeter security or virus scanning may also require additional costs. Finally, storage is never a one size fits all solution so this will always present itself as a variable.

The cloud is definitely a solution worth looking into for a number of reasons, however as a smart business move it would be equally prudent to look at all of the considerations as well prior to signing any type of contract.

4 Considerations for Cloud Based Email

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Email has become a vital part of our lives, crucial in to business and the way we work in this new information age. With literally billions of email messages being sent every single day, it has become quite literally indispensable. Each business worker sends an average of 36 emails a day, and they receive as many as 74 in return. This huge volume brings into sharp focus issues of mailbox size, as well as the attachment size for files that go with the emails that we send and receive.

Specifically, I am considering the issue of email attachments from the perspective of businesses and their employees.

Most corporations, in order to try and balance storage capacity with backup and restore time, and data recovery, will place restrictions on the size of their users’ mailboxes. Companies will also restrict the size of an attachment that users can send via the corporate email server. Sometimes, companies will also place restrictions on the size of email attachments that can be received as well.

I recently came across an interesting bit of research in the UK by Virgin Media Business, which shows that these limitations that organizations place on attachment and mailbox size are actually holding back the country’s public sector with regards to efficiency.

In many cases, public sector workers are instead resorting to the use of public file sharing services to transmit company files and other sensitive information. Of course, this creates a huge problem with regard to corporate data security. The survey, which was completed by ten of the largest public sector organizations in the UK, came up with some very surprising and sometimes even disturbing results.

Interestingly though, it also showed that by relaxing the limitations on attachment and inbox size, increased productivity and a reduced security risk would result.

The survey found that a lot of the restrictions these organizations placed on employees were unnecessarily tight. As a result, productivity was being impacted and a lot of confidential data was being put at risk. The results also indicated that a great many staff were constantly attempting to find methods of circumventing the tight restrictions, as they were worried that important messages and/or attachments would not be received.

Focusing on the limitations placed on mailboxes, the survey showed that some 69% of workers were unable to send or receive email messages that are bigger than 10MB, while 89% were limited to 15 MB for sending and receiving mails.

On average, workers in the UK are restricted to sending messages no bigger than 12.5 MB in total, and they are also restricted to a mailbox size of just 140 MB, which is not that big at all when you consider those 74 messages we receive each day.

These tight restrictions that have been placed on UK workers mean that they are very often unable to send or share large documents and files with colleagues and/or clients. In order to get by this problem, workers are instead making use of public file sharing websites such as DropBox or YouSendIt in order to upload and share the files there. Another way round the problem is to simply use personal email accounts.

Now, while this stop gap approach may work for the time being, and many workers and even bosses seem to be quite comfortable with the practice, doing such a thing is incredibly risky. Sensitive company data can easily be put at risks when it is transmitted using these methods.

Moreover, as the trend is for businesses and their workers to need to share ever-larger files with their co-workers, mailbox and sending limitations have the potential to become a massive hindrance. In many cases, employees will experience errors with their emails because either the attachment they are trying to send exceeds the limit of the recipient’s mailbox, or because it is already full.

In my own organization, we too have similar network restrictions, which are in place to balance bandwidth management with data storage, while maintaining a backup and restore time that is acceptable.

Currently, the restrictions in our office are that attachments can go up to a maximum 20 MB, but there are no restrictions to what we can receive. Our mailbox size meanwhile, is restricted to 2 GB.

These restrictions are justified, based on the number of employees we have, and the current storage capacity we have available.

However, I wonder if this will always be the case? When I consider the temptations of my staff to make use of public file sharing services, I am sure that when it comes round to me evaluating our data storage capabilities again, I will seriously consider raising these numbers a bit.

So a few thoughts to leave you with. What is the maximum mailbox size of your organization, and what’s the maximum attachment size?

Instead of just arbitrarily setting them, you may want to consider if these limits are justified, or if they need to be increased.

The Tricky Question of Balancing Mailbox Size Limits

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If you receive tons of emails daily then it is imperative to know how to manage your inbox.  Emails, if not removed regularly, can clog your inbox making it look messy and disorganized.  An overloaded inbox would definitely not help you do your job better or quicker.  In fact, it may even be a cause for delays since there would be so much information that you have to deal with. An inbox that is brimming with messages can also cause your system to crash, which can delete all information from Outlook.

Another reason why you should clean your inbox regularly is that an inbox that is clogged with information would make it easy for you to lose track of important emails that require immediate action.  This is because mails would be piled up on top of each other, making it hard for you to locate critical and crucial messages.

What’s the Inbox For?

The inbox was designed to be a temporary holding area for your mails and should remain that way.  The wrong attitude towards the inbox is to treat it as an address book, calendar, filing system, and bookmark list.  Inboxes should be cleaned at least once a day.  This would require some discipline on your part but it would definitely be of big help to you over time.

Cleaning your inbox

Cleaning your inbox means emptying it of emails.  When you find emails that are important you need to save them somewhere else.  You should make folders for different purposes.  Pictures should have their own dedicated holding area as well.  The goal is not to leave any file or email in your inbox.   You may want to do “general cleaning” before you step out of your office or prior to bedtime.  This way, you would be able to start the next business day with a clean inbox.

A good practice that can be implemented in your company is to have all personnel name their emails appropriately.  This would make scanning faster and so you would be able to distinguish right away if a particular email would need your immediate attention or not.  Titles should be specific and should accurately represent the content.  When you respond to an email that does not have a good title format, change the subject first before sending.

Do not forward urban legends, chain letters or jokes.  Have your friends and colleagues do this as well. These types of files are really unnecessary and you would be better off without them.

Dealing with Spam

You should abide by a zero tolerance policy when it comes to spam mails.  If you ever do get spam mails, delete them immediately, or better yet report them to your anti-spam vendor right away to improve their detection rates.  Do not even try to open spam mails for kicks as these might harm or endanger your computer.   Many spam mails contain viruses or malware infections that can steal sensitive information from your PC or wreck havoc in your system.  Spam can easily be detected.  Some may come from legitimate sources but their absurd or lame title messages are dead giveaways.   Spam creators also love using links that have no logical title.  A better option would be to set your Outlook to block Spam mail from entering your inbox.  Outlook can be configured to distinguish and block low value emails such as Spam.

Newsletters

When you get newsletters read the title first.   The more interesting ones can be opened and scanned.  Afterwards, delete it.  Always remove newsletters from your inbox whether they are worthy of your attention or not.  You will find that most newsletters are just marketing ploys designed to lead you into buying products or services.  Many will have exaggerated content.  For unwanted newsletters, block them using anti-spam software.   If you keep getting newsletters from a reliable source, just unsubscribe.  However, there are some unscrupulous companies out there that will make it hard for you to unsubscribe from their newsletters.  If they ask you to write them an email, do so.  These little inconveniences will be worth your time in the end.

Best Practices for organizing your Inbox

1. There are some internal tools in your computer that may send out automatic emails once in a while.  In these instances, just quickly scan the mails then delete them afterwards.  Most of the time, these mails would contain information that are already present in the internal tool.
2. Another way that you can organize or manage automatic emails is to use Outlook filters.  These tools can direct unnecessary files (e.g. quarantine reports from anti-spam software programs, newsletters, updates from internal wikis and internal issue tracking systems, and mailing lists) to specific folders.  You may check these folders daily and see what files need to be saved or deleted.
3. For general FYI mails that do not require a direct reply from you, read through them then delete.  If it is about a scheduled meeting, mark it in your calendar using a calendar software program or wait for an invite from the host.  If an email is about a significant milestone, you may want to move it to a special project folder.
4. For To Do mails, use the 2 minute rule.  If you can finish the job in two minutes, get on it right away then delete the email.  If the job would require more time, move the mail to your To Do folder, then remove it permanently from your inbox.
5. Another way to manage your inbox is to organize emails by date and sender.  Select the ones that are relevant and important to you, for example emails from people who you communicate with on a regular basis.  Go over the titles then select which ones need to go and which ones need to be moved to a dedicated folder.
6. An indirect way to de-clog your inbox is to reduce the amount of emails you send out.  An email to most people will require a response so keep outbound emails to a bare minimum.  Instead, use the phone or just go directly to the person you would like to communicate with.

6 Tips for Effective Inbox Management

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Is your email inbox literally bursting at the seams every time you open it? If it is, then don’t you think that perhaps it’s time to get a little more organized? Having an overflowing email inbox is the main cause of your email client slowing down, and it also means you waste time not being able to find crucial emails in a hurry.

I understand it might seem like a daunting task to get yourself organized, but it’s really not so difficult when you know how. The first step on the road towards organization is cleaning up your inbox, followed by some intelligent archiving of your emails. In this post I’m going to outline my simple Microsoft Outlook system for keeping my emails tidy, and I’ll also throw in some tips on how you can archive your older emails too. And even if you use another email client instead of Outlook, you can probably apply these tips anyway.

The most important tool that Outlook has is the AutoArchive feature. It allows you to do all kinds of things, including directing where archived data should go and specifying how old items need to be before they are archived.

1 – Globally Configuring AutoArchive

Setting up AutoArchive is a very easy process. Go to Tools > Options > Other > AutoArchive, and then choose the settings that work best for you. My personal preference is for a weekly cleanup, and to be informed when it’s about to do so. Another thing I like is to collect all of my archived data into just one archive folder (Archive.pst), and then as the year progresses I will manually move the old data to monthly archives. These are the settings I recommend for easy organization:

• Turn on – AutoArchive every week
• Turn on – AutoArchive prompts
• Turn off – expired item deletion when AutoArchiving
• Set Archive.pst as default archive file

2 – Setting AutoArchive Properties for Individual Folders

If you want to set the properties for your individual folders, do this:

Select the folder > Right Click > Properties > AutoArchive and then choose the settings you want. Don’t forget to repeat this for each folder that you wish to archive.

Recommended settings:

• Turn on – Clean items more than 1 month old
• Turn on – Move old items to default archive folder

3 – Manually Move Archived Files to Monthly Folders

This should be done each month, in order to have a nice organized monthly record of all your emails, just like mine. To do so, you need to create a new folder each month, something like “Archive 2010 December n.pst”.

By doing this, your archived files will be nicely organized when you come to view them all in Windows Explorer or the File Open box. Creating a new PST file is very easy, simply follow these steps:

Select File > Personal Folders File (.pst) > Choose a folder > Enter the name > Click Create. Make sure that the descriptions you use each month are consistent, so that Windows will file them in a nice, organized way. As for the other options, I just leave them all set as default. You should now be able to see the new PST folder listed in your Folder List or Outlook bar, and it will contain only one folder – Deleted Items.

4 – Copy Data Before You Move It

It is strongly recommended that you copy your data before you attempt to move it. Once you have successfully copied the data, you can then delete it from its source. You need to do this because copying or moving files is very resource-consuming, and will slow everything else on your computer down. Should you get the “Low Resources” message flashing up on your screen, there’s a good chance that something will go wrong with the operation and you could lose data. So always make a copy first.

5 – Tidying Up Your Monthly Archives

Once a new month begins and there is no more data for that month coming in, you can tidy everything up before dumping it into your new PST folder for the past month. You may or may not want to take out any old attachments, and you should also check that no records are saved in the Deleted Items folder.

You can open an archival PST file by selecting File > Open > Personal Folders File (.pst) > Choose the file you need > Click OK. Note that you only have to open these archival PST files when you are moving data into them.

When you want to close a PST, simply right click it on your Outlook folder list and select the “Close” option.

6 – Compacting Your PST Files

Doing this will not only leave everything nice and tidy, but it will save a load of space on your hard drive too, so it’s always a good idea. First of all, you need to close any applications you have running, including the Task Scheduler. Now, right click on the PST you wish to condense > click Advanced > Compact Now. This may take a while, even several minutes depending on how big the file is, but whatever you do, do not interrupt the process. Once it’s finished, clear all dialogs and finally close the folder.

7 – Don’t Let Your Archive.pst Get too Big!

You should routinely check your archive.pst folder (before each monthly archive) to make sure it doesn’t get too unmanageable. My personal rule is to compact it when it gets too big, but if it’s over 80MB then you should carry out some manual pruning first, because the compacting operation is somewhat untrustworthy.

7 Tips For Managing Outlook Email Archives

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My colleague Paul Mah recently wrote an excellent article called “The Argument for Smaller Email Inboxes.” In this post, he laid out several compelling reasons why companies may want to limit the size of their users’ inboxes, and I encourage you to review Paul’s article, either before continuing with this one, or after. Every story has two sides, and his post addresses real issues companies may encounter if they simply allow unlimited mailbox size without first assessing their environment.

However, I have been and always will be an advocate for larger mailboxes. The larger, the better, and if you have the infrastructure, and the clients that can support this, I think you’ll understand that this is a great way to go. While my post here will address Microsoft Exchange, several of the ideas are applicable to other mail servers too. Here are my 5 reasons for supporting larger inboxes.

1. All email, all the time

I have had a Gmail account since the days of the pre-announced betas. My mailbox capacity is currently listed at > 7.5 GB. I only have about 412 MB of mail in it, but I have every old email I might ever need to find, no matter what or how long ago it was received. The oldest email I have in it is from 2001. In a company, I want the same thing. Who cares if the email was from five years ago? I know I received an email that has the information I need… I ought to be able to simply find and open it. I don’t want to have to parse through dozens of archives, or request a tape be brought up from the catacombs. Outlook 2010 has a great search tool and I should be able to use it.

2. Ready access from anywhere

If all the email I have is on the server, then I can get to it from anywhere. Whether I use Outlook on the laptop you just gave me because mine died, or OWA, or my phone, or my iPad, mail that lives on the server is backed up, online, and accessible no matter what happens to my client devices.

3. It’s discoverable

Sure, there are two sides to this argument too, however, if something comes up and you are served with a court order to provide emails relevant to an issue, being able to simply index and dump from the server is quick, easy, and keeps you from having to bring in the users’ laptops for imaging, pull tapes from years old archives, or any of the other fun things that might be necessary to comply with the order.

4. Exchange is designed with this in mind

Exchange 2010’s design is intended to keep all your mail on the server, ready for whatever client device an authorized user has to access it. Exchange 2010 has reduced IOPS per user to 0.1, ensuring optimum performance from the largest drives even if you are not buying top of the line SANs. Reducing IOPS was done with less expensive hard drives in mind. Since that does not come without its own set of risks, consider Database Access Groups and the self-healing capabilities of Exchange 2010.

5. PSTs (the alternative) are evil

When you limit users’ mailbox size, your intent may be to encourage them to prune their inboxes of unnecessary emails, but the result is they will create PSTs; lots of really big ones. After the first hard disk crash on a laptop (which will probably result in lost business data unless you can recover the PST,) the users will start to move those PSTs off to network shares so they are backed up. Congratulations, they have just crushed your fileservers. PSTs are NOT supported as an enterprise means for storing mail (KB297019) and you can read more about their performance hit on the network here.

As I indicated at the start of this post, a lot of the above is predicated on you having current version clients, the latest version of Exchange, and adequate storage for these large mailboxes. If you are running on an older system now, please keep the above in mind as you begin to plan for your new system. Whether that is for next quarter, or next year, being able to support large mailboxes offers significant advantages to businesses, and will make the email admin’s day much easier.

At my current company, we give each user, whether they are the CEO or an intern, 25GB of space. How large (or small) are your inboxes, and why?

5 Reasons for Larger Email Inboxes

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The release of Microsoft Exchange 2010 substantially increased the maximum database size that can be handled by its core messaging engine to 16TB (Terabyte).  This is 10 times more than the 200GB (Gigabyte) supported in Exchange 2007, and must appeal to companies looking to support more users or larger mailbox quotas.  Of course, the maximum supported size does not necessarily conform to best practice sizes recommended by Microsoft, for which the Microsoft Exchange team has released a detailed spreadsheet documenting the various scalability limits here. (You will need Excel 2007 and later to open it)

Regardless of the Exchange Server version in use, enterprises have a number of techniques to support the needs of their organization.  What I want to talk about today however, are some considerations that email administrators and IT managers should evaluate prior to upping the limits on their corporate inbox.

Computing the storage cost

The most obvious argument against large mailboxes would of course be the dollar cost that acquiring additional storage space will incur.  While hard disk storage has plunged in recent years, assigning 10GB inboxes instead of 2GB or even 5GB ones does add up to a hefty amount.  In addition, there is also a need to factor in the cost of data mirroring technologies too, which can result in a doubling of storage space if RAID1 is used, for example.  Factor in the corresponding increase necessary for offline or archival storage, and the storage requirements goes up higher still.  Clearly, performing a linear computation multiplying users with their mail quota is not an accurate way to determine the true cost of any increase in quota.

The Microsoft Outlook equation

Email administrators must also remember to consider the Microsoft Outlook clients deployed in their organization before committing to a large mailbox quota.  The reason is simple; old versions of Outlook have much lower limits than those found in recent versions of Exchange Server.  Outlook 2002 and earlier for example, have an overall size limit for personal folders (.pst) file of just 2 Gigabytes, though the default configuration for Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007 allows for up to 20GB when configured in non-IMAP and HTTP configurations.  Actual limitations aside, anecdotes and my personal experience do indicate a certain amount of performance deterioration in Outlook when working with excessively sized mailboxes.

Of course, the limiting factors highlighted above are not found in Outlook Web App (OWA), which has been steadily growing in functionality and usability.  Using OWA exclusively though, would mean that some of the capabilities I’ve highlighted in Useful Features in Outlook and Exchange that you may have Missed will not be available.

Potential challenges to backup and disaster recovery

One factor that is not immediately obvious when making a decision to loosen email quotas is the additional burden forced upon existing disaster recovery processes.  Doubling mail storage space could conceivably double the amount of time required when performing nightly data backup, for example.  In addition, the purchase of faster network equipment or backup appliances might even be required should the backup window be exceeded due to the additional time incurred.  The same set of challenges applies to disaster recovery, and in the worst case scenario might require the reworking of existing business continuity strategies to meet your company’s recovery time objective.

The actual needs of users

Compliance requirement aside, administrators need to evaluate if users will truly benefit from an increased mail quota.  Does doubling storage quota bring about genuine productivity gains, or does it simply represent capacity that will be squandered away in a couple of months?  Hence administrators should not be fixated about computing storage costs and solving technical constraints, but should instead focus on determining the derived value of a larger inbox.  And yes, five-years-old emails might be better off archived in an off-line system.

Another consideration is how the amount of large multimedia files that users are transferring has grown over the years.  As such, a pertinent question would be whether precious storage space is being wasted by large, unwanted attachments.  Microsoft added Search Folders into Outlook 2007 onwards, and you might want to use this tool to check whether users in your organization are guilty of sending large attachments.  I did a quick check and despite my aggressive elimination of large attachments, found that 15% of my mailbox space was taken up by attachments of 1MB and more.

The Argument for Smaller Email Inboxes

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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.

10 Email Archival Best Practices and Considerations

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Despite the benefits of giving users large electronic mailboxes, many administrators have been reluctant to do so because of the costs and complexity involved. However, those costs can be reduced and that complexity simplified making large mailboxes a more viable solution with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010.

That’s what Microsoft maintains in a recent white paper, “The Microsoft Large Mailbox Vision: Giving users large mailboxes without breaking your budget.” In the document, the company explains how new features in Exchange 2010 can reduce storage costs, as well as improve the operation of existing systems.

What’s wrong with small mailboxes? For one thing, they require user intervention to manage. Users are forced to make decisions on what should be saved, archived or deleted in order to stay within size limits. Not only do those decisions waste valuable time for users, but they can result in important organizational knowledge being trashed.

Faced with the prospect of reviewing an onerous number of emails, some users take shortcuts to avoid the burdensome task. One typical shortcut is dumping emails into .PST files. That creates a whole new set of problems. Universal access to the emails is lost because the files can be accessed only on the machines they were created on. If the files are corrupted, oftentimes there’s no way to recover the data in them. What’s more, since the files are outside the Exchange infrastructure, they can be difficult to search–a serious problem should an organization be hit with an electronic discovery order in a lawsuit.

One way Exchange can reduce the costs associated with larger mailboxes is by allowing organizations to substitute lower performance, higher capacity disk storage for high performance, lower capacity disks.

Disk performance is measured in IO operations per second, or IOPS. A disk can perform a maximum number of IOPS and each Exchange user consumes a  number of them. With Exchange 2007, each user consumes about 0.3 IOPS. Exchange 2010 reduces that number to 0.1 IOPS. That means an organization running Exchange 2010 can have more people access an Exchange server without it taking a hit on performance. So on a 146GB disk rated at 150 IOPS, for example, 500 users with mailboxes with a maximum size of 300MB could be accommodated before disk performance would be affected. With Exchange 2010, though, a cheaper, slower disk with more capacity–say, a 1TB disk rated at 50 IOPS–could be substituted for the higher performing platter and serve 500 users with mailboxes with 2GB limits. Better yet, the 50 IOPS disk can be had for 25 percent of the cost of the 150 IOPS hardware.

“By taking advantage of the increasing capacity in disk technology and combining it with the Exchange Server 2010 IO performance reductions, organizations can reconsider their Exchange storage options and provide large mailboxes for their users without breaking their budgets,” Microsoft asserts.

A problem with using cheaper disk for storage is reliability. They’re likely to fail sooner and more often than high performance disks. That concern was taken into account when designing Exchange 2010. The software has built-in resiliency features based on Database Availability Group technology, or DAG. With DAG, up to 16 mailbox  servers can be used to manage failures. Database copies can be stashed locally to provide high availability and remotely for disaster recovery. Exchange 2010 can automatically switch between database copies to keep an organization humming through any database snafu, such as disk failure. “The built-in Mailbox Resiliency solution enables a system in which nightly backups for recovery purposes are no longer necessary,” Microsoft contends.

When data changes in the active database, it explained, it is reflected in the passive copies of the database. If a database fails, a passive copy will come to the rescue. If a server fails, the functions of its databases will be picked up by copies of them on other servers.

One problem with replication, though, is that accidental changes may be made in the database copies. A file deleted inadvertently on the active database will be deleted on the copies and become unrecoverable. Exchange 2010 deals with that problem in two ways. It has a single item recovery feature for quick correction by administrators of user errors. It also has the ability to create “lagged” copies of the active database so it can be recovered from a particular point in time.

Another resiliency feature of the software is its ability to handle physical disk errors. When the program encounters an error reading or writing to a database, it automatically retrieves the correct data from a copy of the database and repairs the error. What’s more, it re-maps the disk so the damaged block of storage isn’t used again.

“Larger mailboxes are better for users, IT administrators and organizations,” Microsoft argues. “They use today’s storage systems more efficiently. They help users stay productive by giving them better access to the valuable organizational knowledge contained in historical email.”

Creating large mailboxes with Exchange 2010

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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.

7 Reasons for Email Archiving

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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.

Any questions?

Archiving is Insurance against eBlackmail

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Backing up and archiving email and other data in the cloud has become popular as a low-cost alternative, and there are plenty of cloud storage providers out there trying to get your business. And the argument about low cost and low maintenance is compelling. With Google, Microsoft, and Amazon getting into the cloud business, it’s gotten quite mainstream.

But a recent article on Network World pointed out that cloud computing vendors are still seeing problems and loss of data–most recently, cloud storage provider Carbonite filed suit last week against a hardware vendor claiming that their equipment caused backup failures two years ago. And they’re not the only one, there are plenty of stories out there about hosted sites either losing data or temporarily going down.

And so it is appropriate to stop and think about whether storage in the cloud really is a good idea–especially for sensitive applications like email, which may contain valuable corporate data or may be subject to regulatory controls regarding archiving. And, the cost argument is only valid if you look at it in the short-term. Granted, most companies today are decidedly short-term in their calculations, but I’ve never seen that as a particularly good thing.

Email storage in the cloud

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Although we take email for granted, the use of email can easily get out of control for administrators. People rarely walk down to another office to have a discussion or idea exchange.  Writing an email that can be sent to multiple people with attachments slowly uses up massive amounts of hard disk space.

For any organization, this massive storage usage creeps up.  Savvy administrators keep an eye on these behind-the-scene scenarios that create this creeping storage nightmare:

• People are trying to maintain their position by copying everybody who’s anybody, which duplicates emails.
• People have that “pack rat” mentality and keep years worth of emails within folders. This includes the document attachments.
• Email box quotas attempt to manage disk space, but many staff find a way to circumvent this process to get approval to have their quota increased.
• The IT department gets tagged for managing high I/O hardware processing, whiling balancing backup storage costs.
• Let’s not forget the IT department’s added burden of trying to control bulging email data stores.

Email archiving helps eliminate these issues or at least implement controls for better storage resource manageability. There are various types of archiving solutions. For example, stubbing is often a key variable involved in the email archiving solution. Stubbing creates a pointer, which is maintained on the email server, such as Microsoft Exchange.  The original message and attachments is moved over to an alternate archive storage area. When a user wants to look up a historical email, the stub is referenced. Then that message is retrieved from archive. This provides the benefit of a reducing the size of the mailbox.

Although stubbing eliminates the problem of mailbox storage, over time problems can arise. Email stubs can actually cause server performance issues. This is caused by the increase in the number of messages and related stubs being pointed back and forth. This may result in stubbing being a finger in the dyke approach that does not curtail the growing email storage problem.

Other alternatives for facilitating archive storage of email includes:

• Eliminating personal folders. This removes the burden of users to maintain their own local email storage. No longer do users need to purge mailboxes to comply with quota limits and, since there are no local PST files, email performance is improved while reducing the risk of data loss.
• Trimming duplicate emails through single instance stores (SIS) reduces space taken up by multiple copies, which greatly reduces storage requirements.
• Instant access to archives without the need for quotas and stubbing. Users can store as much email as they like without incurring the performance hit that stubbing introduces.
• End user self-service allows continuous access to archived email. Content indexing allows email users to access all email, while providing improved searching capabilities.

Tips for controlling your archive storage system

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Earlier I wrote about Backup and Recovery considerations for email administrators in an enterprise environment and the need for establishing a well defined Recovery Time Objective (RTO). And I related that it has been estimated that 40 percent of recoveries fail. If you’re using tape for your backups and recoveries then you have probably already noticed that it can sometimes take hours to fully restore your email backups to your required point in time established by your specified RTO.

An alternative to using traditional tape backups for your email servers is to instead write your backups to disk. Data recovery is usually much faster when using disk technology as opposed to tape. But you still need a well written backup and recovery procedure.

Even if your backup and recovery procedure is well planned and thought out you can still have problems during implementation. Procedures that have too many dependencies or complexities are more prone to errors. Most often backups must be initiated after hours so as to avoid impacting a running production environment.

And if you are running a Windows-based file system and require a consistent point in time for your file captures then most often you’ll need to use an open file manager. File system backups can take several hours and consume many CPU cycles when the backup software has to read through the huge amounts of file system related metadata, select the files for backup, and then perform the backups. Most daily backups are incremental with full system backups occurring on the weekends. The time and impact on utilization of resources require this type of scheduling.

In almost all enterprises it is an ongoing requirement of the IT department to reduce the backup window. One technology that can help alleviate the negative impact of backups for email servers as well as other servers is known as Continuous Data Protection (CDP).

With a good file-based Continuous Data Protection product installed, administrators can avoid the problems that can occur as a result of viruses, corrupted or deleted files and normal operations issues. Email data such as email messages or mailboxes can be recovered with a CDP product that is optimized for Microsoft Exchange.

Products on the market exist that can track file system changes continuously through the use of filters on specialized servers. File changes are tracked and logged which result in faster file recoveries. In the case of email servers, recovery can be as fine-grained as recovering a single email file.

CDP also eliminates the need for disruptive production system backups since CDP products make use of separate servers which can then be used for tape backups if needed or still required.

Backing Up Email to Disk

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The storage of very large volumes of email represents both an asset and a liability. There are powerful reasons for accessing stored email messages. This can include compliance with laws and regulations that require long retention periods and supervision of email. Some of these regulations might require consideration of SEC Rule 17a-4 or NASD Conduct Rule 3010, as well as the corporate governance recommendations established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Government agencies, too, must archive email messages to comply with regulations set by the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Patriot Act, and other Federal and State legislative acts. For example, the laws in Florida grant state citizens the right to request copies of all public records. Those public records that must be made available can include email.  People must also receive the requested information in a timely manner. Failure to comply exposes Florida state agencies to lawsuits. Many organizations can potentially encounter the possibility of civil litigation. This resulting legal action will usually include demands for copies of archived email messages and all accompanying attachments.

Ever expanding email storage and increasingly stringent email retention requirements places the spotlight on IT professionals to come up with effective compliance strategies. This is compounded with legal regulations on storing information. Backing up data to alternate media is just not enough. Network administrators are expected to implement a retrieval mechanism that assures their company will be in compliance when presented with document retrieval requests. As with almost all technology projects, administrators will be expected to find a way to do this with the least possible expense impact to the business.  There is a fine directive with balancing corporate business strategies and effective total cost of ownership.

Operating without implementing an email archiving compliance strategy could become very expensive. Attorney Jeffrey Plotkin, a partner with the law firm of Eiseman Levine, located in New York City,  says “the cost of court-ordered searches of scores of backup tapes can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars”. Mr. Plotkin should know, considering he has 18 years of experience handling securities enforcement matters.  It isn’t the point of a company email storage mechanism containing any evidence of doing something wrong. The bigger issue is a failure of not being able to produce any and all requested records required by any legal investigation. This is why trying to piece together information manually can become time consuming and very expensive.  There is also no guarantee that this will be realistically accomplished, without an automated archiving strategy.

Balancing Regulation Compliance with Archiving Strategy Costs

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