The Portland Daily Business News reports that Osterman Research has published a new white paper entitled: “A Guide to Messaging Archiving.” According to the press release, Osterman Research “indicates that support for regulatory and legal compliance obligations and growing storage requirements are among the reasons for companies to deploy a messaging-archiving solution, and that any one of those rationale can often justify the entire cost of the archiving capability.” Michael Osterman, president of Osterman Research, said that “having a messaging-archiving system in place is becoming increasingly critical in today’s business environment. We’re seeing an increasing number of examples of companies paying a massive price for a failure to produce electronic documents and e-mails.
The study includes the following factors as significant reasons to implement an email archiving solution:
Regulatory compliance. Industries that are heavily regulated, such as financial services or health care companies, must meet a variety of statutory requirements with regard to records retention.
Legal compliance. Dec 2006 revisions to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) require organizations to manage their data in such away that it can be produced in a timely and complete manner when necessary, such as during legal discovery proceedings.
Reducing the impact of storage. Roughly 60% of decision-makers cite growth in messaging storage as a serious or very serious problem. Messaging storage, driven by increasing use of e-mail, larger attachments and the like, is growing at an average of 35% annually. By migrating data from storage on messaging servers to archival storage, companies overall storage costs can be reduced, while improving their messaging server performance and expediting recovery from downtime incidents.
My thoughts: at this point there is certainly no shortage of reasons to archive email. This white paper only highlights the list of issues facing both enterprises and businesses in relation to integrating an email compliance solution. With HIPAA, SOX, GLB, NYSE, NASD, AND SEC laws firmly in place, the monitoring and enforcement of corporate email retention is a top priority for U.S. industry regulators. FRCP eDiscovery proceedings have only placed the necessity to archive email on a grander scale, as harsh sanctions and criminal prosecution are legitimate possibilities facing those companies who cannot produce email evidence in a timely fashion. Additionally, the strain placed on an in-house server to retain the thousands upon thousands of in-coming and out-going emails that are accumulated daily has also enhanced the attraction of outsourcing an email archiving service.
HOWEVER, is this really what will get the corporate world to archive their email? I think that Osterman Research has done a great job, but I think that the benefits to email archiving are out there and have been out there. With so many laws, requirements, and IT concerns already established will a new white paper citing what is already known really make a difference? For some it might, but for many it wont. In a recent series of posts about Email Insurance I said that cost, complexity, satisfaction with email backups, apprehension about an unfamiliar corporate practice, and professional disinterest were big reasons why email archiving has not risen to the top of the business agenda. What the U.S. business world needs is the following three factors to help push email archiving into the corporate spotlight: Education. Momentum. Trust. I want to elaborate much more on these three factors in subsequent blog entries but for now I am going to focus on education.
“A Guide to Messaging Archiving” sounds like a nice tool for a CEO or CIO willing to invest the time to learn about email archiving, but will they? Who reads white papers? White papers are academic endeavors designed to provide a degree of expertise in a given topic. Most business professionals are simply too busy to be bothered with reading a white paper no matter how beneficial it might be for their business operation. This seems a strange scenario. People are taking the time to draft comprehensive analyses of important topics and nobody is reading them? I wouldn’t say nobody here, but unless someone is seriously considering a purchase it is not a common phenomenon. How can education about corporate email archiving become more appealing? How do you make people WANT to get what they SHOULD get in the first place? I believe this is where attorneys come in. I believe this is where the news comes in. I believe this is where word of mouth comes in. Sometimes it depends on WHO is doing the educating. Might a white paper be more informative then listening to an attorney speak? Sure. Might it not? Sure. That is up to the individual person doing the listening. But what I do know is that hearing what you need to do from someone that you perceive to be in the right position to make a judgment call will win over reading a white paper almost every time. Our society is governed by law. People trust the law. U.S. Businesses trust the legal practitioners that represent the law. If email archiving is to be taken seriously it must come at least partially come from attorneys.
Is there something wrong with a new white paper on email archiving by Osterman Research? There is nothing WRONG in the traditional sense, but I feel that corporate America is just waiting a different form of education, one that they feel more comfortable with. When is this change coming? Is this change coming? I would like to do some more writing on these issues soon. Stay tuned.
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Societe Generale, France’s second largest bank, recently discovered that a rogue trader cost the bank at least $7 billion in U.S. Dollars. No, that is not a mistake. $7 billion dollars. Regarded as a fraud of historic proportions, this scheme will surely draw some attention to the bank’s internal procedures and monitoring of electronic communications. In other words, how could the bank let this happen? Was there an email management system in place? Did the trader ever contact anyone at the bank and let them know of his plan? According to an article by James Rogers of ByteandSwitch, the answer might be no. He reports that the “precise details of what happened at Societe Generale are yet to emerge, although intial media reports say that the alleged rogue trader acted alone.” Neither ByteandSwitch nor a few other related sources indicate that the bank had an email archiving solution in place. Would that have made a difference in this particular scenario? If the trader really did act alone, then probably not. However, perhaps the better question is: would it USUALLY make a difference in a situation like this? The answer to that is an overwhelming yes. It is rare for a solo operation of this magnitude to be carried out without any co-conspirators or helping hands, no matter how big or small the role might be. A comprehensive review of archived email more often than not reveals that there was something going on behind the scenes that just managed to stay quiet.
So, what is the big picture here? In my humble opinion, if email retention was truly not a factor for Societe Generale, the bank must realize that it could have been. I would even go so far as to say it SHOULD have been. I am blown away that Jerome Kerviel managed to supposedly pull this off without any assistance. Whether poor email management is responsible for allowing Jerome Kerviel to slip through the cracks or not, there is no doubt that something like this will happen again. And next time, there is a good chance it wil be at the hands of poor email management.
My advice: begin treating email management just like any other form of insurance. What do auto insurance, health insurance, life insurance, and travel insurance have in common? They are each highly important policies in modern society that guard against potential tragedy? At this point, email insurance really should not be considered any different. E-discovery proceedings, email audit inquiries, political scandals, and criminal activity are just a few of the essential reasons why it is time for ALL organizations to integrate an email archiving solution.
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