The issue of how to securely archive business email is one that affects every organization. Employee email data theft affects two in every three organizations, with 69% reporting “a significant data or knowledge loss” due to the actions of departing in a 2016 study conducted by Osterman Research.
The problem is not confined to organizations operating in regulated industries. Many day-to-day workings of an organization, policy changes, and business-critical decisions are communicated by email, and it has been estimated many organizations store up to 75% of their intellectual property in email. In many cases business-critical data is stored in email accounts and nowhere else.
Threats Exist Outside an Organization as Well
The failure to understand how to securely archive business mail can also result in significant data loss to cybercriminals. A new threat has emerged in which cybercriminals hack into an email server, remove the email data and demand a ransom. If the ransom is not paid, the data is destroyed. Similarly, ransomware gangs have started stealing email data before encrypting mail servers.
Although most organizations in a regulated industry will have encrypted their data – so it is of no value to the cybercriminals – few will be unable to function properly if they are unable to access recently sent and received emails. Therefore it is not only important to know how to securely archive business email, but also how to quickly and easily restore it. With a cloud-based archive, email data can be quickly and easily restored in the event of disaster such as a wiper or ransomware attack.
Lack of Security Can Mean Lack of Compliance
Some explanations of how to securely archive business email fail to acknowledge the regulations that organizations have to comply with. For example, not all business email archiving solutions copy email data at the time it enters or leaves the mail server. Periodic archiving can result in emails being deleted before the solution has had the opportunity to copy them.
This not only means that data supposed to be protected is no longer available, but disaster recovery plans are incomplete and auditing safeguards are ineffectual. Compliance issues can also occur if archived email data is improperly altered, or if personnel not authorized to access protected data are able to retrieve archived emails due to a lack of permission levels.
Where to Start with How to Securely Archive Business Emails
The first place to start with how to securely archive business emails is to acknowledge that the highest level of security is provided by cloud-based business email archiving solutions. These solutions copy data from the mail server and store it in a secure data center in an encrypted format. All communications between the mail sever and data center are also encrypted. The data is replicated across different servers to ensure it can always be accessed and automatic backups are performed. There is also no patching requirement. The solution is automatically patched and updated by the service provider.
Cloud-based business email archiving solutions are more secure than hardware, software or hybrid solutions because there is no risk that data is lost, stolen or damaged – as might happen with a hardware solution – or corrupted due to a system failure or malware infection as might happen with a software solution.
Features That Will Optimize Email Data Security
Within the range of cloud-based business email archiving solutions there are many different types available. The important features that will optimize email data security are the immediate copying of data as it enters and leaves the mail server, a mechanism for delegating permission tiers so that not everybody has access to business-critical archived email data, and tamper-evident audit trails.
Tamper-evident audit trails allow administrators to monitor access to archived email data and identify improper alterations and unusual or client-specific activity. This feature will assist organizations in the event of a compliance audit to show they are taking every precaution to ensure the integrity of email data and prevent unauthorized disclosure.
Efficient Cloud-Based Business Email Archiving Solutions
While identifying how to securely archive business emails, organizations should ensure they do not sacrifice efficiency for security. Cloud-based business email archiving solutions work in different ways – some copying all data from a mail server, others removing duplicated content from emails before compressing them, indexing them and archiving them.
Deduplication accelerates the search and retrieval process, as search engines do not have so much data to process. It also means that search results do not contain dozens of emails containing the same conversations and are therefore easy to navigate. Organizations should also be aware of limits on the number of searches that can be conducted at the same time, and limits on the number of results.
ArcTitan Cloud from SpamTitan – Secure, Compliant and Efficient
ArcTitan Cloud from SpamTitan is a cloud-based email archiving solution that takes the worry out of how to securely archive business email. A “set and forget” solution, ArcTitan Cloud stores archived email data in an IL5 certified data center – Replicated Persistent Storage.on AWS S3 – and all searches and results are conducted over mandatory TLS protocols.
ArcTitan Cloud copies all traffic through a mail server immediately to ensure every email is captured. A mechanism for delegating permission tiers exists, and administrators can schedule reports in order to review tamper-evident audit trails. Mechanisms also exist for administrators to define their own retention policies to fit your organization´s regulatory and compliance needs.
In terms of efficiency, ArcTitan Cloud removes all duplicated email data and leaves stubs in the mail server to facilitate faster searches. Despite this efficiency-enhancing process, ArcTitan Cloud is capable of archiving 200 emails per second and searching a database of 30 million emails in under a second, with options for users to select the fields over which they wish to search and how results are delivered.
Being a browser-based solution, ArcTitan Cloud is compatible with all operating systems and all major email services. The archiving process enables users to search across multiple servers and multiple stores, without the need for plug-ins. ArcTitan Cloud can support up to 60,000 users without a deterioration in performance, yet is easy to understand and straightforward to use.
In the event of a disaster or ransom demand, archived emails are easy to restore from ArcTitan Cloud. Searches can be ordered by date, user(s) or tags, and emails restored to the mail server with the click of a mouse. The option to restore emails with this level of flexibility may also be of benefit if employees have maliciously deleted archived emails prior to their departure.
Key Features of ArcTitan
- Scalable, email archiving that grows with your business
- Email data stored securely in the cloud on Replicated Persistent Storage on AWS S3
- Lightning fast searches – Search 30 million emails a second
- Rapid archiving at up to 200 emails a second
- Automatic backups of the archive
- Email archiving with no impact on network performance
- Ensure an exact, tamperproof copy of all emails is retained
- Easy data retrieval for eDiscovery
- Protection for email from cyberattacks
- Eliminate PSTs and other security risks
- Facilitates policy-based access rights and role-based access
- Only pay for active users
- Slashes the time and cost of eDiscovery other formal searches
- Migration tools to ensure the integrity of data during transfer
- Seamless integration with Outlook
- Supports, single sign-on
- Save and combine searches
- Perform multiple searches simultaneously
- Limits IT Department involvement in finding lost email
- Compliant with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, etc.
See Our Cloud-Based Business Email Archiving Solution in Action
We believe the best way for an organization to evaluate cloud-based business email archiving solutions is to see the solutions in action. In this respect we are inviting organizations of all sizes to take advantage of a free, no-obligation demonstration of ArcTitan Cloud.
To find out more about our offer, or to ask any questions about how to securely archive business email, do not hesitate to contact us. Our team of Sales Technicians will be happy to organize your demo, answer any questions about how to securely archive business email, and liaise with your IT department to ensure a seamless deployment of ArcTitan Cloud.
