OK, what you say over email might not always be intellectual, but it's your brain-stuff. And you own it. Most important, it might be vital to you someday. Like, in seven years... And you'll need to find it and present it.
This means that you'll need to set up an email compliance solution that allows you to search and retrieve email quickly. Essentially, organisations will comply with discovery requests only if their email archive stores every email sent or received by the organisation. Did you get that?
Where things get sticky is that email isn't shrinking. In fact, it only increases in volume and size. Sixty unread messages today alone sound familiar? The required periods of retention vary across industry. It could be two years. Or seven. So buckle up.
Why do we need an email retention strategy?
Australian email retention laws require certain emails to be retained. To comply, organisations must ensure that emails are adequately secured for -- at least -- the minimum period of retention.
Yes, you have to keep your email somewhere. For legal reasons. No, you can't print and file each email feed. Well, you can try.
But failure to adequately keep all business communications could place specific employees or the directors of your board at risk of severe penalties. This ultimately leaves your entire business susceptible to risks no one can afford to take.
Both individuals and companies can be prosecuted in the event of a breach. And the penalties can reach $330,000 for the corporation and $60,000 including five years of imprisonment for the individual. Board members get roped in too.
Other risks of non-compliance include:
1) Fines or imprisonment for breach of legislation
2) Legal actions being settled simply because it's cheaper than complying with expensive discovery requests for old emails
3) Lost cases because of missing email records or archiving processes deemed legally inadequate
4) Loss of intellectual property
Destroying adverse documents, including emails, is the most serious offense. You're at risk for obstruction of justice (if they're destroyed). And, if you fail to produce a document in litigation, it may even lead to an assumption of guilt in litigation. Getting an idea of the possible damage? If not, let's break it down.
The turnaround between being sent a discovery request and presenting the necessary documents is tight. So your archive needs to facilitate a speedy search and retrieval function.
If you don't already have an email archiving solution working for you, these three models can keep you out of risk: on-site, hosted, and the most recent innovation, cloud-based archiving.
Before making the call on your archiving solution, consider the affecting commercial factors:
1) Is it cost-effective? An on-site solution is the most pricey option because you're responsible for server management and all maintenance.
2) Is it reliable? A clunky and unstable archive will not only be painful to use but pointless in which to invest.
If it sounds complex, it actually isn't. And you're best equipped when you're in the know. Just make sure you choose a solution that works for you.
Christa is a Marketing Assistant for SAVE IT. For more information, download SAVE IT's compliance whitepaper at http://blog.saveit.com.au/compliance-with-australian-laws-and-regulations
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