(Author unknown)

• Journaling email creates a real-time copy of all email flowing between the mail server and the secure email boundary, writing this copy to a journaling mailbox within the mail server

• Archiving email empties the journaling mailbox at configurable intervals, moving the data to an archive container which may support configurable encryption and/or compression

• Email stubbing matches archive data to the mail server data, with the server copy physically deleted and replaced by a “stub” pointing to the archive container; this “stubbing” is transparent to the end user; the archive container may be placed on economic tier 2 or 3 disk media or CAS or disk WORM storage with response times substantially unaffected

• Archive migration moves archive containers to other tiers or storage media (such as tape), maintaining the integrity of the stub; in a move to tape, the stub allows any user access to prompt the appropriate tape load; response time is longer when the archive container is on tape

• Archive purge identifies and releases data for subsequent physical purging as needed, such as when the defined retention period expires; the actual physical purge is often a separate function and is rarely automated on the expiry date

Sample Strategic Policies

• Strategic Policies call out the basic rules, laws, metrics, and approach to achieving the organizations strategic imperatives. Such rules and laws provide a unifying and aligning capability to achieve corporate objectives across organizational boundaries. Strategic Policies lay down the basic governance to apply to the execution of organizational imperatives.

• The following are elements of an actual overall email policy and are meant as examples:

– Compliance – The company will actively comply with all appropriate legislation, regulation, and industry practice.  This includes the preservation of intellectual property and related business information assets that may be initiated and or contained within or attached to email received by or sent from email facilities. This policy requires each departmental head to be responsible to ensure that data requiring preservation such as but not limited to the official copy of record is preserved by moving such data to approved file containers on approved IT-provided departmental servers where protection policies are executed by IT operation.

– Storage – Unauthorized storage may expose the company to damaged reputation, major financial penalties, legal jeopardy, and disadvantage in litigation-ordered discovery. To protect the company against such exposure, the activity of email users on their computer is subject to certain constraints including a prohibition on storage of email or email attachments  for periods beyond that defined by departmental policy and the departmentally-selected tier of service for archiving.

– Exceptions – Departments requiring retention periods not covered by the four standard classes of service may make a case to management to seek an exception. A request for such exception must include lifetime cost of retention estimates and will require formal signoff by management as a pre requisite to consideration. The department receiving such exception must fund the exception policy.

Tactical Policies

Support the achievement of the strategic policy.  As business units develop their own plans in response to strategic plans laid down by the organization, the need to develop supportive policy at the tactical level becomes apparent. Tactical policy provides a disciplined and documented framework of laws, or rules, that will govern the development of infrastructure required to support the strategic objectives.

• The following are elements of an actual overall email policy and are meant as examples:

– All email entering or leaving the secure email boundary shall be automatically captured and protected.

– The base level of service is to retain email for a period of two years after receipt or sending.

– Additional Tiers or levels of service are offered to departments requiring additional retention periods.

– Service level objectives for all tiers provide for a Retrieval Time Objective based on the age of email.

– Email will regularly be migrated from production technology tiers to more cost-effective tiers.

 

Email Retention Tiers
Tier	Retention	Price per Message
1	10 years	$.07
2	7 years	$.02
3	5 years	$.005
4	2 years	Free

 

gn=”top” style=”width: 161px”>Less than 12 months

Email Retrieval Time Objectives
Message Age	Retrieval Time Objective
	Under 5 seconds
1 to 2 years	Under 30 seconds
2 to 5 years	Under 5 minutes
Over 5 years	Under 24 hours