Are You Prepared to Comply with Potential Court Orders?
So the big question is: does your digital storage system meet these federal standards? If you received a court order tomorrow requesting all emails from the past 6 months that relate to your business’ main competitor, would you be able to comply? What if the court order also required you to separately archive all email related to this competitor from this point forward – do you have the ability to do so? If your current system is not up to snuff, how much would it cost your organization to retrieve the required data?

This is a big issue, and it affects companies of all sizes. Even Intel, the world’s largest microprocessor maker, is currently dealing with this very problem. Apparently Intel’s internal email archiving system hasn’t been doing its job. Locked in a 2-year-old legal battle with a major competitor, Intel is now spending millions trying to find and recover about 1,000 lost emails related to this lawsuit.

Is Your Digital Storage System Out of Date?
If you’re in Intel’s boat, you’re not alone. We’ve seen a lot of problems out in the field. Some common issues organizations have with their digital storage system include:

• Inability to meet the new regulatory compliance requirements - due to insufficient (or nonexistent) archiving systems.
• Inflexible mailbox size and quota restrictions - resulting in the need to constantly adjust mailbox quotas and actively manage disk space limitations.
• PST headaches - pst files saved on local hard drives are a disaster waiting to happen (if the hard drive crashes) and a regulatory nightmare if you have to search every laptop and desktop as part of the legal discovery process.
• "One size fits all" retention policies - when what you really need is the ability to set up different retention policies for different groups of employees or different categories of files.

There Are a Number of Solutions Available
The good news is there are a number of viable software packages on the market today (including Symantec Enterprise Vault, EMC Email Extender, and Zantaz’s Enterprise Archive Solution) that can solve these problems and help you meet the new Federal standards for digital storage. Coyote Creek Consulting’s archiving experts can assess your current situation and recommend the best solution for your needs. Call us today to ensure that your company avoids legal nightmares tomorrow.

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