Simplicato’s Weblog

Did you hear the latest news regarding missing emails? No, it wasn’t some large corporation being sued for antitrust by another large corporation. No, it was not a revelation made during a discrimination or harassment trial. The missing emails seem to be some of the White House’s. Questions were initially raised when the White House, under court order to disclose, had to admit that it had recycled some of its email backup tapes. This revelation has heightened speculation that some email may be lost or destroyed. How could this happen, you may ask?

Backing up data is an important business continuity measure against something like a failed hard disk. If such an event were to occur, email backup can be used to restore the most current condition of a hard drive. This can be done in a relatively short amount of time and afford a business the opportunity to get back to normal quickly. But using email backup to preserve data is another matter entirely. The more critical the role that email plays in everyday business, the more stringent the protective measures that need to be in place to ensure preservation. Email backup technology that is widely in use today cannot guarantee that email will remain in its authentic form. This means that a message can be removed from an email backup tape, altered, and restored to the same location from where it was received with little or no notice. And how do you prove it is the original message that is in question, especially when that is in dispute? Even forensics have trouble answering that one. Moreover, the data on an email backup tape is not permanent. It can be overwritten, which sometimes happens when trying to control cost and manage tape rotations. Once the tape is overwritten you effectively remove previously recorded data.

The best way to protect against lost, altered, and unauthorized access to email is by using a message archiving system. One whose sole responsibility is to serialize each incoming and outgoing message, protect against deletion, alteration, and limit access to only authorized individuals. An effective message archiving system uses a medium that is similar in efficiency to disk technology, but with a combination of email security measures that ensures the integrity of the data stored will never be compromised.