Email archiving is an issue that all businesses will have to deal with at some point. Email has become the most common form of business communication and the most common form of sharing business documentation. Controlling that communication is going to be vital for every business.
The best way to do this is through a third party email archiving solution. But what if your company can’t afford an email archiving solution? What are the email archiving best practices you can follow so that you don’t need to invest in a solution?
Store Your Email in One Place
If you're using your own email solution, you need to follow the same email archiving best practices as third party providers do. In terms of storage that means keeping all of your email in one place. That way when you need to recover old email, you’ll know exactly where to look.
Setup a Structure
Structure is vital in an email archiving solution. When you’re archiving email you need to do it in a way that’s easy to search. So filenames, folders etc. need to be uniform to aid in the search process. Email archiving best practices are designed around compliance and eDiscovery, both of which focus on powerful search functions. You need to make sure your own email solution is easy to search.
Make it Procedure
For your new email archiving solution to work, it needs to cover every email. If you don’t have the automated options provided by a third party, you need to make sure that every single employee follows the procedure to the letter. One rogue email can ruin the integrity of an eDiscovery or regulatory request. If you’re setting up your own solution, this needs to become strict email archiving best practice for every single member of staff.
These are just some of the email archiving best practices you’ll require to effectively manage your email archive. All these and more will be required if you want your business to continue without any form of third party email archiving solution. The other option of course is to let a third party do it all for you with a simple cost effective solution.
