When it Comes to EDiscovery, EMail Management is Key

It is not unlikely that one day your company will be a party in a law suit. In the digital age, this means scrambling to compile records in a broad variety of forms-e-mail, instant-messaging traffic, Microsoft Office files, accounting databases, CAD/CAM files, Web sites, sound and video recordings, and more-all to be used in the discovery phase of the legal process. You'll be asked to find this information no matter where it resides, regardless of whether it's in a managed or unmanaged repository. This task can be daunting. The expense of collecting the information is often costly.

With recent regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) and Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), there is a new world of compliance. Based on these regulations, companies must have clear policies on data retention, enabling management to quickly and easily identify applicable data for the discovery motion. If the company is the claimant in the law suit, it is required to disclose the company's e-discovery policies in its first meeting with the defendant after the filing of a case. This includes a plan for producing the data within a reasonable amount of time. If the company cannot produce data subject to discovery, per its own policies, the company could incur substantial fines.

What makes the ediscovery task even more overwhelming is the growing amount of data a company produces. A study by the The Radicati Group in 2007 reveals that a typical corporation will generate approximately 4.3 GB of electronic data per user per year. And by 2011, it is expected to grow to 6.7 GB per year. Much of this data is email. According to IDC, e-mail volume has doubled over the past 5 years to over 40 billion person-to-person e-mails daily. Moreover, the volume is expected to continue to grow over 18 percent in each of the next five years. The good news is there are now ediscovery solutions to help ease the burden and cost of compiling electronic data. Spirinet offers e-mail archiving, along with spam filtering and web defense, through its partner MX Logic. MX Logic Message Archiving, powered by MessageWatcher®, can easily and effectively help businesses to comply with email archiving and electronic security regulations like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, HIPAA, and the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP).

The fully-managed email archiving service also helps to protect businesses from workplace compliance issues, including harassment, discrimination and illegal activity.

Does your business need a better solution for managing email? Spirinet Technology Services can help you assess the best solution for your business. For more information, please call us at 877-DIAL-MSP.

Spirinet Technology Services provides IT services to the Northeast area small and medium size busineses. Our services include an all-encompassing, fully outsourced IT department with CIO-level consulting, budgeting, systems integration and administration, 24x7 helpdesk and Voice over IP services.

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Labels: EMail Management is Key, When it Comes to EDiscovery