Email archiving has become an increasingly complicated task companies which need to complete in order to comply with compliance laws, while internal data archiving may be considered something exclusive of banks and financial institutions, laws have been enacted to regulate several other industries. The following list briefly shows the industries and laws which are to be kept:
Healthcare: The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) 1996, which involves patient health data encryption during transmission throughout a network. Hedge Funds: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) 2006 regulations on private investment pools, this involves archiving and securing all electronic communication. Pharmaceutical: 21 CFR Part 11 by the FDA (1997) which involves rules for the use of electronic signatures and records. Accounting: The Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Act, 2002. This law sets strict regulations about the retention and maintenance of records. Banking: The Gramm-Leach Bliley Act, 1999. This law was enacted to protect customer's information while in transit or in storage by strict encryption measures. Securities: SEC 17a-4 and NASD 3010. Both regulations set strict standards on electronic communications which involves emails.
As stated above, businesses operating within these industries are expected to comply with information archival, encryption and maintenance regulations. The problems with these laws is that they require strict classification of internal data which can't be accomplished using traditional email applications such as Microsoft Outlook or any other mail client.
The fact that a company can gather hundreds of thousands and even millions of emails and electronic communications is overwhelming, not to mention that if the company in question is inspected, owners and managers have to sort and classify all of these records within a short period of time since inspectors won't wait weeks or months to have all this information sorted out.
Managing and classifying this information is one requirement which is hard to accomplish but these laws also require heavy encryption to make sure data won't be leaked or modified from the network and fall into the wrong hands. As you can see there are many guidelines which need to be kept so it is imperative to use software tools which can be managed by one person quickly and efficiently, these law compliance tools should provide features such as:
* Accurate Search platform * Find and collect all electronic communication within the network with a single operation * Classification of all incoming and outgoing emails through automatic global policies * Extremely Strong Internal Controls for Compliance * Verified and unalterable logs * Full auditing of all searches, email reviewed, and logons * Powerful data collection tools * Data loss protection
As you can see all of these tasks are so complex and time intensive that even if assigned to an entire division of a company, it couldn't be accomplish quickly, securely and accurately; that is why special electronic communication management software is required. It is extremely important to keep in mind that the use of this technology is not a luxury but the LAW. Using these tools can help you keep your business going without worrying about communication compliance laws. AthenaArchiver provides information and solutions about Electronic Discovery Software as well as email archiving applications. Visit us at http://www.athenaarchiver.com/
