Email Archiving

The GDPR, Email Retention and Email Archiving

Aug 25, 2021 | Email Archiving

In this post, we will explain how does GDPR apply to email retention and email archiving, and how an email archive can help you comply with the GDPR.

The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced new requirements for businesses on May 25, 2018. From the compliance date, businesses that collect or process the personal data of EU citizens were required to implement safeguards to protect the personal data of EU citizens. The GDPR also gave EU citizens new rights over their personal data.

The GDPR applies to personal data in all forms, no matter where data are stored. That means personal data in email accounts is covered by the GDPR. Email inboxes and folders can contain a wealth of personal data and that information is subject to the strict privacy and security requirements of the GDPR.

Email data may also need to be retained to comply with laws in the country or state in which your business operates, and certain industries such as finance and healthcare have industry-specific legislation with provisions covering email retention.

There is no minimum or maximum time stipulated for email retention in the GDPR, instead, the GDPR states that personal data can be kept in a form that allows an individual to be identified for no longer than necessary to achieve the purpose for which personal data were collected or processed. The GDPR allows personal data to be processed for archiving purposes.

The GDPR requires businesses to implement security measures to ensure personal data are protected. Article 5(f) of the GDPR requires personal data to be protected “against accidental loss, destruction or damage, using appropriate technical or organizational measures.” The easiest way to ensure email data are protected is by using encryption and storing emails in a safe and secure environment where they are protected against unauthorized access, accidental deletion, and tampering – an email archive.

It is worthwhile explaining the difference between an email archive and a backup, as while both can be used to store emails there are important differences between the two. A backup is a temporary repository for email data that ensures emails can be recovered in the event of data loss. Backups are usually only kept for a limited about of time, usually, until a new backup is created. A backup allows the mail system or data in an email account to be restored to a specific point in time. An email archive is used for long-term secure email storage and, in contrast to a backup, it can be searched and individual emails can be quickly found and retrieved.

Many businesses already use an email archiving solution to comply with state, federal, or industry regulations. An email archive is also invaluable for eDiscovery and dealing with customer complaints, as it can be searched and emails can be quickly and easily retrieved on demand. An email archive can also be used to recover email data in the event of a disaster, so it also protects against data loss.

An email archiving solution is important for GDPR compliance as it allows email data to be stored safely to prevent data loss and unauthorized access. Personal data in emails can also be quickly be found, recovered, and deleted securely, if an EU citizen exercises their right to be forgotten, for instance.

ArcTitan, TitanHQ’s secure email archiving solution, is an ideal email archiving solution for GDPR compliance. ArcTitan includes end-to-end encryption for email data, access controls – including role-based controls – to ensure email data are protected against unauthorized access, and ArcTitan creates a tamper-proof record of all email data for the duration of your email data retention policy.

If emails need to be found, the archive can be searched and messages can be quickly and easily retrieved. With ArcTitan, you can search 30 million emails a second. Multiple searches can be performed simultaneously, searches can be combined and, in contrast to Office 365 archiving, the same search can be used to find data in the message body and attachments.

ArcTitan is very competitively priced and you only pay for active users. If you are unhappy with your current email archiving provider, changing to ArcTitan is a headache-free process and assistance will be provided by our highly experienced support team. For GDPR compliance, ArcTitan is an ideal email archiving solution.

If you would like to have further information on ArcTitan, contact the TitanHQ team today.

A Cloud-Based Email Archive is Perfect for a Remote Workforce

Oct 13, 2020 | Email Archiving

Many companies have adopted a hybrid workforce model, where employees spend some time in the office and some time working from home. This working model works well for the business and gives employees the flexibility they want.

Some businesses have transitioned to a fully remote workforce, but then 2020 arrived and virtually everyone had to do the same. Research from Gartner suggests that during the coronavirus pandemic, 88% of companies made remote working mandatory.

The rapid change to an office-based to remote workforce caused major headaches for IT teams, but it has allowed business to continue to function during incredibly challenging times. There have been productivity issues and technical problems, but business have weathered the storm and have continued to operate. Employees can still stay in touch and collaborate using online using chat platforms, videoconferencing, and the telephone and some businesses have reported an increase in productivity since switching to remote working.

While there are now many different methods of collaborating and maintaining contact, remote working has meant businesses and their employees have been forced to rely on email to a much greater extent. The increased reliance on email means it is now more important than ever to ensure emails can be accessed come what may, even if email servers are down. Should anything happen to the email system, work can grind to a halt.

Many businesses use emails as a store of essential information and much of the data in emails is not stored elsewhere. Figures from IDC indicate around 60% of business-critical data resides in emails and email attachments and that was before the pandemic.

There are many regulations covering business data, including at the federal, state, and industry level. There are set retention times for certain types of data, regardless of where the information is stored. If the information is stored in emails, then that information must be protected and secured against accidental or deliberate deletion until the retention period is over.

Backups of emails can be performed to meet certain regulations, but problems exist when it comes to recovering emails. Finding emails in backups can be an incredibly time-consuming process that can take days or weeks. Even finding the correct backup media can be a major challenge in itself, and then finding emails in a backup – which is not easily searchable – can seem a near impossible task.

The way to ensure privacy, security, and meet compliance requirements and ensure that emails and attachments are never lost is to use an email archiving service. Email archives are created for long term data storage. Email archives can be easily searched, so when emails need to be found and recovered, the process takes seconds or minutes. A tamper-proof record of all emails is retained for compliance purposes and to protect against data loss and ensure business continuity in the event of disaster.

Many businesses have implemented an on-premises email archive, but this is far from ideal in a world where virtually everyone is working remotely. After the pandemic is over, many employees will return to the office, but remote working looks set to stay. The best option is therefore to use an email archiving solution that perfectly suits the remote working or hybrid working model.

Cloud-based email archives centralize disparate email servers and store all emails securely in the cloud where they can be quickly and easily accessed by any authorized individual, from any location. Since many businesses now use cloud-based email, sending emails to a cloud-based archive makes more sense than using on-premises archives. Sending emails to the archive and recovering emails will be far quicker from a cloud service to a cloud service.

If you have an on-premises email archive, transitioning to a cloud-based service can save time and money. There is no need to maintain hardware, perform software updates, and the archive is automatically backed up to guarantee emails can always be recovered and storage space will never be an issue due to the scalability of the cloud.

TitanHQ’s Cloud-Based Email Archiving Solution

TitanHQ offers a cloud-based email archiving solution – ArcTitan Cloud – that is scalable to more than 60,000 users that delivers high performance and reliability. Every email sent and received by a company is automatically sent to the archive. Messages are deduplicated to save on storage space and are compressed in the archive. All emails are indexed and tagged to make searching a quick and easy process. Whenever an email needs to be recovered, a search of 30 million emails takes less than a second.

All emails are encrypted in transit to the archive and at rest and the email archive is automatically backed up. If emails need to be accessed during a mail server outage, they can easily be found in the archive. ArcTitan really is a set and forget solution.

ArcTitan Cloud supports point and click easy search or expert search with sophisticated query language. Searches can be saved, multiple searches can be performed at the same time, and you can search the entire archive, departments, user groups, or individual mailboxes. Permissions can be granted to employees to allow them to access their own archives to ensure they never lose and email and do not need to trouble the IT department when they misplace an email. You can search emails, but also inside all common file formats including Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint, PDF, RTF, ZIP, tar, gz and Open Office documents.

Migrating from an existing cloud archiving service or an on-premises archive to ArcTitan Cloud is a quick and easy process and support will be provided if required. There are no proprietary data formats used, so if you ever want to export your data, that is a quick and easy process too.

Many email archiving services require you to pay for all mailboxes, even when employees leave the company. With ArcTitan, you only pay for the number of active mailboxes and there are no limits on storage space. The solution is easy to implement, use, and maintain, all of which have made the solution incredibly popular with SMBs and MSPs serving the SMB market. On top of that, ArcTitan is one of the most cost-effective arching solutions for businesses.

Figures correct as of July 2020.

For more information on cloud-based email archiving and the ArcTitan solution, give the TitanHQ team a call today.

10 Reasons Why You Should Archive your Emails

Sep 30, 2020 | Email Archiving

While the telephone remains a vital tool for business, a great deal of transactions and conversations now take place over email. More than 306 billion emails are now being sent every day and a business with 100 employees will typically send or receive around 4,000 emails a day, many of which will contain important information that is critical to the successful operation of the business.

The loss of emails could prove very costly for businesses, as much of the information stored in emails and email attachments is saved nowhere else. In the event of disaster, such as corrupted PST files, hardware failure, or a destructive cyberattack, email data could well be permanently lost.

Not only could the loss of email hamper the ability of a business to operate, it could potentially result in a significant financial penalty. 24% of organizations have reported receiving a request from a court or regulatory body to produce emails. If emails can’t be produced, the cost of the financial penalties do not even bear thinking about.  They could prove catastrophic to a business.

Most businesses backup their emails as part of their disaster recovery plans, but there are problems with backups. Backups cannot be searched, so finding emails can take an extraordinary amount of time. To ensure that emails are never lost and can be found and recovered in a matter of seconds or minutes, most businesses choose to use an email archiving solution.

Here we list 10 of the most important reasons for using an email archiving solution.

10 Reasons Why Businesses Should Archive Emails

Data Loss Prevention

One the most important reasons for using an email archive is for data loss prevention. Emails are sent to the archive for long term, secure storage. If an employee accidentally deletes an important email from their inbox, the message will not be lost as it can easily be recovered from the archive.

Mail Server Performance

The amount of emails now being sent places a strain on email servers and having large volumes of emails stored on the server negatively affects server performance. Storage space can also become an issue. By sending emails to an archive, they can be removed for the mail server which will greatly improve performance.

Litigation and eDiscovery

In the event of a lawsuit, you are likely to be required to produce emails related to the case and you will only have a short period of time in which to respond. Finding emails in PST files and backups can be an extraordinarily time-consuming process, and you may have to search through several years of email data to find all the emails you need. You must also ensure that the messages are original and have not been altered in any way. An email archive makes responding to eDiscovery requests and finding and producing emails a quick and simple process.

IT Department Productivity

The IT department has to spend a considerable amount of time on managing the email system and resolving email storage issues. When employees delete or lose important emails, the IT support desk is expected to respond. Sending emails to an archive eliminates email storage issues and simplifies maintenance. Employees can be allowed to access their own archives and can easily search for emails, saving the IT department a lot of time that can be put to much better use.

Disaster Recovery

In the event of hardware failure, email data can easily be lost. Laptop computers may be lost or stolen, again resulting in the loss of email data. Ransomware and wiper malware attacks could easily wipe out the email system and could potentially result in critical data loss. By sending emails to the archive, in the event of disaster, emails can quickly and easily be recovered.

Regulatory Compliance

If you operate in a highly regulated industry you will need to retain email data for a set period of time, but all businesses must retain certain types of data, much of which is stored in email. An email archive helps with regulatory compliance. Data can be tagged and retention periods can be set, with emails automatically deleted when the legal retention period is over.

Data Access and Right to be Forgotten Requests

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other laws give individuals the right to request a copy of the information that a company holds on them. If a request for access to personal data is received, the data must be produced quickly. An email archive allows you to instantly search for email data and quickly respond to right-of-access and right-to-be-forgotten requests.

Internal Audits

There will likely be many occasions when you need to conduct internal audits of email data to find out what employees have been communicating via email. In the event of a customer dispute or an HR issue, you will need to search email data. An email archive makes this quick and easy, and allows you to resolve issues promptly without having to involve the IT department.

Business Continuity

In the event of disaster, you will need to have quick access to email. If an employee suddenly leaves the company, you will need to find all emails related to specific clients. With easy access to email and with the advanced search capability of an email archiving solution, you will be able to ensure business can continue as normal.

Cost Reduction

Searching for lost emails, managing email servers, responding to eDiscovery requests, and producing email data for audits can take an extraordinary amount of time. An email archive will slash the amount of time that needs to be devoted these issues and helps you avoid unnecessary costs. An email archiving solution will more than pay for itself in terms of the costs saved.

ArcTitan – Cloud-Based Email Archiving from TitanHQ

ArcTitan is a powerful, secure, cloud-based email archiving solution from TitanHQ that ensures you will never lose an email. ArcTitan acts as a black box flight recorder for email and gives you total protection against email data loss.

The solution is fully compliant with all industry regulations, email data is protected with end-to-end encryption and is encrypted in the archive, the solution is quick to set up, easy to use, and effortless to manage.

Lightning fast searches can be performed when you need to find emails, with emails sent to the archive automatically at a rate of 200 emails a second with searches of 30 million emails taking less than a second.

There are no limits on storage space, no onsite hardware requirements, and you only pay for the number of active mailboxes. Businesses that use ArcTitan typically save up to 80% of email storage space.

For more information on ArcTitan, details of pricing, or to book a free demo, call the ArcTitan team today!

Benefits of Moving an Email Archive

Aug 31, 2020 | Email Archiving

Many businesses have created an email archive for compliance purposes and to ensure emails, documents, calendars, and other data in the email system is preserved to meet regulatory obligations and for disaster recovery.

Many businesses only discover after they have been using an email archive that it does not quite live up to expectations, is proving to be expensive, or the archive is no longer performing as well as it should.

Once you have set up an email archive, it does not mean that you are tied to any provider. Migrating your email archive to another provider that offers a service that is more suited to your organization requires a little planning, but it can be a pain free process.

Is it Time to Upgrade your Email Archive?

One of the main reasons for changing an email archive is because legacy archives have become sluggish due to the volume of backed up data. Over time, these legacy archives can become unreliable, searches do not always provide all the results, and in some cases the archiving solution reaches end of life and patches are no longer issued so security becomes an issue.

Storage space can become a problem if you are using aging email archiving appliances or physical servers, and latency can increase, especially if you have transitioned to cloud-based applications such as Office 365. If an email archive is failing to perform, it is time to upgrade to a new archiving solution; one that is more modern, can be searched much more rapidly, and does not pose a security risk to your organization.

Cloud Email Archives Can Solve Your Archiving Problems

With an increasing number of organizations having migrated to Office 365, using a cloud-based email archiving service makes a great deal of sense. Your email data is already in the cloud, so switching to a cloud-based email archive is a logical step. Moving data from the cloud to on-premises infrastructure is likely to involve some degree of latency, whereas archiving from a cloud service to another will avoid these latency problems and see improvements in performance.

You will not need maintain on-premises hardware with a cloud-based archive. The email archiving service provider is responsible for maintaining the hardware, patching, and performing updates. Cloud-based email archives also have scalability. As your email volume grows, your archive automatically scales, and more storage space is made available. You will never run out of storage space with a cloud email archiving service. Your cloud email service provider will just arrange for more servers to be made available.

Cloud email archives can also be accessed from any location, on any device, through either an email client or web browser – something that has become much more important during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many employees now working from home.

Making the change to a new email archiving service provider will likely greatly improve performance and allow faster archiving and searching. That means considerable productivity gains and less headaches for your IT department as the maintenance burden will be eased.

Companies that switch from legacy email archives to cloud archiving services can greatly reduce the cost of email archiving, allowing them to put their resources to much better use. Even switching from one cloud email archiving solution to another can see considerable costs saved.

ArcTitan: Save Costs and Improve the Performance of Your Archive

Regardless of the current email archiving solution you are using, migrating your email archive to ArcTitan is a straightforward and quick process. TitanHQ will guide you through the migration process, providing detailed steps to take to get your archive migrated quickly. Alternatively, we can talk you through the process and even work with your current provider directly to transfer your archive.

If you are upgrading from a legacy email solution to Office 365, you can simply transfer your archived data to ArcTitan, rather than send it to Office 365. Again, full assistance will be provided by our knowledgeable engineers.

Many ArcTitan customers have managed to reduce the load on their mail servers by 80%, significantly improving performance. Maintenance time can be slashed by around 50%, and the cost savings are considerable.

Then there is the speed of the solution. ArcTitan conducts searches at a rate of 30 million emails a second, searches can be combined, multiple searches run at once, and emails and attachments searched in the same search. Searches can also be saved if you conduct them frequently.

Security is assured with email data protected by end-to-end encryption, with passwords hashed and encrypted. Your archive is encrypted and stored securely on Replicated Persistent Storage on AWS S3 and will be automatically backed up. Updates are managed for you and there will never be any patches to apply.

On top of all the features of ArcTitan, many of which are lacking in other email archiving solutions, you are also likely to be pleasantly surprised at the price of the solution (and the margin if you are an MSP looking to add email archiving to your service stack.)

For more information about ArcTitan and migrating your archive, give the TitanHQ team a call today and take the first step toward eliminating your email archiving headaches.

What our Customers Say…

“Fast, scalable, very easy to operate and has all the email archiving features a company needs to have. Safe and the cost was fantastic. A truly superb email archiving tool,” Jesse Gusmao, IT Manager.
Sociedade Hospital Samaritano. Brazil.

“I can tell you our experience has been outstanding. ArcTitan email archive has been the most effective solution we’ve found. Initially, we tested it for ourselves, but given the success we’ve had, we’re now signed up as a reseller and are confidently introducing the product to our small and medium clients.” Lou Liberio, IT Director. Clarion Data Systems, USA

“Exceptionally easy to install and insert into our email infrastructure. The effect and affect of ArcTitan Email Archiving was dramatic. The load on our Exchange server was reduced by 80% immediately.” Mike Pluta, IT Director. NRC Broadcasting, USA

Why Email Archiving is Important for Businesses

Aug 27, 2020 | Email Archiving

Several thousand email messages can be received by a business every day, and many of those messages contain important documents and sensitive information, which in some cases is saved nowhere else other than the email system or on a user’s local device.

Several regulations require email data to be backed up and stored for a certain time period, with many businesses choosing to store copies of business emails using backups. While backups will allow a business to comply with regulations and ensure messages can be recovered in the event of disaster, backups are not searchable which makes recovery of emails a time-consuming process.

An email archive is a much better solution. Email archives store emails in a tamper-proof repository and, in contrast to backups, prior to being sent for long term storage, emails and attachments are indexed to allow them to be searched on demand. When an email needs to be found, a search can be performed and individual emails can be found and recovered in seconds or minutes, whereas the process of finding and recovering emails from a backup could take days.

In the event of a legal investigation, it is essential for emails to be produced. Businesses must be able to prove the integrity of email data and show an original copy of the messages is provided that has not been altered since being sent or received. If you cannot prove the integrity of email messages, you could get in serious legal trouble. In the event of a cyber-incident, email messages are checked in the investigation process, so it is also essential to maintain message integrity and ensure all emails can quickly be recovered.

Given the number of emails received by businesses every day, the amount of storage space that must be devoted to emails and attachments grows quickly. Businesses are likely to require terabytes of storage space, which can prove costly. A cloud-based archive ensures that there is always sufficient storage space available and rules can be sent to delete emails and attachments securely when they are no longer required to be retained by law. A cloud-based archive can reduce storage use by up to 75% compared to on premise storage and reduce maintenance time by up to 50%, resulting in significant cost savings.

Many businesses use Outlook for email, which stores emails in Personal Storage (PST) files. These files are stored locally on each user’s device and are not tamper-proof. They can also become corrupted, can be targeted in cyberattacks, and are at risk of being accidentally deleted. If these files are not backed up, in the event of data corruption or accidental deletion, they cannot be recovered.  Using an email archive ensures that all users’ email data can be recovered, and users’ PST files can be quickly and easily restored. Without an email archive, critical business emails could easily be lost.

If you are required to comply with the E.U. General Data Protection Regulation, you must be able to search for data in email if a request is made by an E.U. citizen to access their data or if they exercise their ‘right to be forgotten.’ If you have an email archive, searches can be performed quickly, and it is easy to satisfy these GDPR requests. The failure to respond to these requests quickly, could easily result in a substantial fine for noncompliance.

Should you ever need to change email systems and migrate to new email servers, all inboxes, messages, and attachments will need to be migrated to the new server. If you do not have the right systems in place, that process can be difficult and time-consuming. Using an email archive makes the process faster and simpler, ensuring seamless migrations with few errors, saving considerable time and effort.

In summary, and email archive will…

• Ensure a tamper-proof copy of email data is retained and is always accessible
• Allow you to search millions of emails in seconds
• Reduce server management costs
• eDiscovery requests can be processed quickly
• Email data is protected against cyberattacks and can always be recovered in the event of a data destruction event
• Email migrations can be performed quickly and easily without data corruption
• Reduce storage space by 50% or more and greatly reduce costs
• Maintain an audit trail to ensure compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), PCI-DSS, SEC, DPA, HIPAA, and GDPR
• Free up IT support time by allowing employees to access their own email archives
• Help with compliance and ensures data can be quickly found and produced in the event of an investigation

ArcTitan: Email Archiving Made Simple

ArcTitan is a powerful email archiving solution from TitanHQ that makes archiving email, performing searches, and recovering email data a quick and simple process.

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, tamper-proof 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 – users can access their own archived email
• Compliant with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, etc.

If you are not yet archiving your email, are unhappy with your current provider, or are an MSP that is not yet offering email archiving to your clients or is unhappy with the service or margins with your current provider, give the TitanHQ team a call to find out more about ArcTitan.

New and Improved ArcTitan Email Archiving System Introduced

Jul 11, 2020 | Email Archiving

TitanHQ customers that are currently using the ArcTitan email archiving solution for long term email storage will soon benefit from a vastly improved email archiving service. TitanHQ is in the process of migrating customers to new email archiving systems that have been developed to improve performance, reliability, and scalability.

The new ArcTitan email archiving service is being delivered on new infrastructure – A highly available, horizontally scaling Kubernetes cluster that is self-maintaining and self-healing. Within the cluster are multiple components that work in harmony, but independently. This has the advantage of ensuring that in the event of a server outage or if a component goes down, there will be minimal or no downtime. Any time a component goes down, all others will remain available and the component that has gone down will be taken offline and automatically repaired. Other components will not be affected.

The new email archiving systems offer replicated persistent storage through Ceph storage clusters. This provides high performance storage and file systems, with automated data replication and fail over.  Amazon S3 is used for long term storage of archived email data, providing reliability, redundancy, and scalability. A Percona XtraDB MySQL cluster is deployed within Kubernetes for handling all database operations. The cluster is self-maintaining, self-healing, and can be scaled with minimal effort and zero downtime. Customers are also provided with a new and improved ArcTitan GUI.

Managing the Migration

TitanHQ is in the process of migrating ArcTitan customers to the new system and the process will be completed with minimal customer effort. First, TitanHQ will create a new account on the new infrastructure. Once the new account has been set up, TitanHQ will be in touch to provide the details and talk you through making a simple change to your connector/mail server to point it to the new server. Once that change has been made, all archived email will be sent to the new archive and the old account will receive no further archived emails. Once TitanHQ has verified mail flow, you will be told that the process has been completed.

TitanHQ will then commence the migration of your archive to the new account. Once that process has been completed, you will be contacted and asked to verify the data migration. Once confirmation has been received, the old archive on the original server will be deleted.

There will be a small delay between sending email to the new account and migrating your historical email data, but customers will not lose access to the old archive. Searches can still be performed on the old archive and you will retain full access to all of your historical email data during the migration.

If you have any questions about the migration or the new ArcTitan email archiving systems, our customer service team will be more than happy to help.

2019 Email Archiving Price Comparison

Jul 30, 2019 | Email Archiving

We have performed a 2019 email archiving price comparison to help you choose the best value email archiving solution for your business.

An email archive is a depository for all emails that are no longer required but cannot be deleted for legal and compliance reasons. The email archive contains an exact copy of every message sent or received across all corporate mailboxes. Those messages are moved out of the mailbox to the archive to free up space and ensure that important emails can not be accidentally deleted and are always recoverable.

In contrast to a backup, an email archive is searchable. Emails can be found and retrieved quickly and easily on demand. An email archive is therefore a useful email repository that can be used on a daily basis to store emails, freeing up space on your mail server to improve performance.

There are many reasons for creating an email archive, but one of the most important is for eDiscovery. Court orders for email communications may be received and emails must be produced as part of the eDiscovery process. Since an email archive is searchable, recovering messages from the archive takes minutes. Finding and recovering emails from backups can take days, if they can be recovered at all.

The failure to produce emails on demand for eDiscovery can result in significant fines. In the case Coleman Holdings v. Morgan Stanley, a Florida Circuit Court awarded $15 million in damages for the failure to comply with email discovery obligations. In Zubulake v. USB Warburg, $29 million in damages were awarded to the plaintiff as the defendant was unable to locate and produce important emails.

State and federal laws in the United States are not the only reason for implementing an email archive. Since the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into effect on May 25, 2018, all businesses that collect or process the personal data of EU citizens must implement safeguards to protect personal data. An email archive meets that requirement by storing an encrypted copy of email data, protecting against data loss and unauthorized access.

GDPR also gave EU citizens new rights, such as the right to be forgotten. If that right is exercised, all data relating to that individual must be deleted. That includes personal data in emails. With an email archive, locating those emails is quick and easy. The failure to respect GDPR rights and process requests in a timely fashion can result in a financial penalty of up to €20 million, or 4% of global annual turnover, whichever is greater.

2019 Email Archiving Price Comparison Grid

TitanHQ has created an email archiving price comparison grid to help you find the most cost-effective email archiving solution. The grid below has been compiled using pricing information based on 100 users.

As you can see, TitanHQ’s email archiving solution, ArcTitan, is extremely competitively priced and costs less than $3 per person per year.

Common Myths About Email Archiving Debunked

Jul 29, 2019 | Email Archiving

Email is now the main method of communication for businesses. Each day, a typical business will receive thousands of emails. Those messages need to be retained for several years to meet state and federal laws and certain industry regulations.

There are two options available to businesses to meet data retention laws for email. Businesses can backup all email data or create an email archive. While businesses will be familiar with the former, there is considerable confusion about the latter.

In this post we will explore some of the common myths of email archiving and will explain the important differences between email backups and email archives.

One of the commonest misconceptions about email archiving is an archive is not necessary because data backups are already performed. Backups are essential as they ensure data can be recovered in the event of disaster. Backups allow a business to create a restore point so that in the event of a catastrophe, systems can be restored to their state at a specific moment in time – The date and time that the backup was created.

An email archive is different. An email archive is used for long term storage of emails. Emails are archived with metadata and can be searched and recovered quickly. Backups are not searchable, so finding and recovering specific emails or conversation threads can be incredibly time consuming.

An archive makes legal discovery, investigating complaints, and providing evidence for compliance audits simple. With an email archive, single messages, threads, and conversations can be quickly and easily recovered.

Another common myth about email archiving is it is only a requirement for businesses in certain industries such as finance and healthcare. While email archiving is essential for meeting regulatory requirements in certain industries, it does not mean that email archiving is just for highly regulated industries.

The U.S. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure require emails to be producible in the event of legal action. If emails cannot be produced, the company could be liable for the destruction of evidence and face stiff financial penalties.

Another common myth is email archives increase risk. Many companies choose a short email retention period, such as 90 days, and require all complaints to be submitted in the same time frame. After 90 days, emails are deleted as they are no longer required. That, however, is a dangerous strategy.

Deleting emails from the email server only deletes local copies. It is probable that emails will have been retained on the recipient’s server. Short retention periods also make the process of eDiscovery more time consuming, expensive, and difficult.

The other risk is that of exposure of sensitive information. Many companies believe that it is more secure to create email archives on on-premises hardware. Security is naturally a concern, but cloud-based email archives are just as secure, if not more secure than on-premises archives. Cloud based archives are automatically backed up to prevent data loss in the unlikely event of hardware failure.

Cloud-based archives also have considerable advantages. They are scalable, so when more storage space is required it is available immediately. With on-premises archives, businesses are limited by their IT hardware and software. Purchasing additional hardware can be expensive and resources must be devoted to managing and maintaining that hardware. Businesses typically save up to 50% of maintenance time by using a cloud-based email archive. Cloud-based archiving is therefore more cost effective and does not involve sacrificing security.

With an email archiving solution, businesses can meet their regulatory obligations, will be able to respond quickly to eDiscovery requests, and will have easy and fast access to any email message or attachment, even if that message was received several years previously. With an email archive, all critical email data is safely and securely saved and stored and can be recovered quickly on demand.

ArcTitan: Email Archiving for SMBs and MSPs

If you are not currently archiving your emails or you are unhappy with your current email arching solution provider, TitanHQ can offer a solution. ArcTitan is a powerful, secure, easy to use, and lightning-fast cloud-based email archiving solution for MSPs and SMBs that is compliant with all email retention regulations.

Key Features of ArcTitan

• Scalable, email archiving that grows with your business
• Email data is 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
• ArcTitan automatically backs up the archive
• No impact on network performance
• Ensures an exact, tamper-proof 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
• Performs multiple searches simultaneously
• Save and combine searches
• Search email messages and attachments simultaneously
• Slashes the time and cost of eDiscovery other formal searches
• Migration tools ensure the integrity of data during transfer
• Seamless integration with Outlook
• Supports single sign-on
• Users can be given permission to access their own archived emails
• Only pay for active users
• Compliant with regulations such as HIPAA, SOX, GDPR, Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, etc.
• White-label version of ArcTitan is available for MSPs and resellers

Email Archiving for Small Businesses

Jan 24, 2019 | Email Archiving

Email archiving for small businesses is now more important than ever. Not only do state and federal laws and industry regulations require data to be retained for long periods, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has introduced new requirements for businesses covering email retention. These requirements for email are best met by using an email archiving solution, although many small businesses are still relying on email backups for long term email storage.

Are Email Backups and Email Archives the Same?

In basic terms, an email backup and an email archive serve a similar purpose. They both allow emails to be stored so they can be recovered if needed. However, there are important differences between an email backup and an email archive, which have become even more important since the introduction of the GDPR.

Emails may need to be recovered for a variety of reasons: An important email is lost, a mailbox has been corrupted, emails need to be reproduced for an audit, for legal discovery, or if a customer exercises their right to be forgotten under the GDPR.

Backups are useful, but they are far from ideal for most of the above reasons. Backups allow email data to be restored in the event of loss if a mailbox has been corrupted – Due to a ransomware attack or a hardware failure for instance. In such cases, email backups allow the email system to be quickly restored to the point when the backup was made.

A backup is simply a copy of email data and allows data to be restored to a specific moment in time – the last known point before a data corruption event occurred. A backup is ideal as a short-term solution to protect against data loss. Each time a backup is made, it typically replaces a previous copy. This means that it is possible for emails to be lost. If an email is deleted or corrupted, and a new backup is made that overwrites the last copy, deleted and corrupted emails may be lost forever. Restoring backups may require the entire mailbox to be restored, even when only a few emails need to be recovered, which is hardly ideal.

How Does an Email Archive Differ from an Email Backup?

With an email archive, emails are moved from the mail system into the archive for long term storage. In addition to emails, tasks, email attachments, and calendars can be archived. Many companies choose to implement an archive not for disaster recovery, as backups are still used for that purpose, but to decreases the workload of an email server, improve performance, and eliminate the need for mailbox limits and PST files.

One of the most important differences between a backup and an email archive is an archive is searchable, which makes it a quick and easy process to find a specific email or set of email messages if they ever need to be recovered. They could be emails sent to or from a specific person, emails that contain an individual’s personal data, or emails relating to a specific person or event.

Backups allows emails to be retained and restored, but backups are not searchable. If an email is lost or needs to be recovered, finding messages can be a very time-consuming process.

In the event of legal action against a company, as part of the eDiscovery process, an organization will have to produce emails related to the case. A limited amount of time is provided to respond, so it is essential that information can be found quickly and efficiently. The same is true for compliance audits, GDPR requests, and when complaints are received from customers.

In contrast to a backup, emails that are archived cannot be lost as no data is overwritten. Archives are also tamper-proof and an audit trail is maintained, ensuring legal compliance. Failure to retain data, missing deadlines for producing data, and accidental deletion of email data can result in major financial penalties. Those fines can prove catastrophic for small businesses. Email archiving for small businesses ensures that these issues never arise.

With an email archive, emails are instantly encrypted to prevent data from being intercepted or accessed by unauthorized individuals and, with cloud-based archives, there is no limit on storage space. Users can continue to use their mail clients or browsers and can easily access archived emails. Email archives are easy to use, manage, maintain, and it is quick and easy process to recover emails on demand.

In short, email archiving for small businesses:

• Adds legal safeguards
• Ensures protection against data loss
• Maintains an audit trail for legal compliance
• Ensures emails can be quickly found and recovered
• Eliminates the need for mailbox quotas and PST files
• Improves efficiency and productivity
• Allows long term storage of emails to meet regulatory requirements

TitanHQ has developed ArcTitan to meet the needs of small- to medium-sized businesses and managed service providers (MSPs). ArcTitan is a lightning-fast email archiving solution for small businesses that archives emails at a rate of 200 messages a second and can search 30 million emails a second.

ArcTitan is a very competitively priced secure email archiving solution that is easy to set up and use and will allow businesses to meet their legal responsibilities with respect to email retention. The solution works with all major email clients and integrates seamlessly with Office 365.

If you have any questions about email archiving for small businesses, if you want to set up an email archive, or would like information on the best solution to meet the needs for your business, contact the TitanHQ team today.