Teams, Zoom & Slack Driving Archiving Beyond Email

Posted on 3 Mar 2022

Microsoft Teams, Zoom & Slack Driving Archiving Beyond Email

In a digital world, data is an asset; and it is no wonder almost all organizations archive data, at least to some extent. Data helps in both short term and long term operations, and hence archives need to be accessible, often for many years.

Many organizations started archiving email because it became the informal documentation of discussions, understandings and agreements. Yet many organizations retain email more informally with no proper security protocols, retention and lifecycle management. The mass adoption of new collaboration and communication tools like Zoom, Slack, and Teams are where business conversations are happening, and thus need to be retained like email. Adding to this challenge is the need to remain compliant with existing and new data retention regulations such as FINRA, SOX, FERPA, HIPPA,GDPR, FOIA and CCPA. Going forward, not only are more organizations going to need to address their need for archiving data and these new communication records, but they will need to think about how to accommodate multi-data archival and compliance in a more streamlined, manageable manner.

Why Should You Archive Data?

A formal compliance-style archiving strategy for you data helps you not only organize this strategic asset, but secure it while making it more operationally useful. Archiving is very different from a data backup, something that becomes extremely evident at the worst time: when data needs to be located and produced. Here are some reasons data archival is necessary:

1. Ensure Compliance

Archiving enables your organization to stay compliant with regulations and standards that now recognize and require retention of communications, not just email and documents. Data storage and encryption policies can be adequately enforced by applying proper rules and data retention policies. Data policies like CCPA and GDPR put down certain mandates regarding the usage of data like:

Right to Know
Right to Delete
Right to Opt-out
Right to Non-discrimination

Employing only an email archival system is no longer sufficient to ensure compliance with all these data specific laws. A more robust multi-data archival system can provide better visibility and compliance with the laws and lift data regulation complications from your hands. These laws help protect the individual’s control over the private information, and violating them can cause hefty fines and restrictions on the company responsible for the data violation.

2. Preparation For Potential Litigation

A compliance tyle archiving system with verifiable “chain of custody” provides better readiness, cost reduction and risk reduction whenever there is potential litigation. An archive system should have a powerful enough indexing engine to make e-Discovery fast, secure and defensible against claims of spoliation. Manually retrieving data from any other method (including backups and long term storage) can be expensive, time-consuming and incomplete. With a true data archive, it becomes easy to retrieve the records needed in a format that is compliant, organized and defensible with complete chain of custody.

For instance, you may be asked to retrieve emails and specific data records for requests under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) that are the standard for US litigation. Archiving them previously should help you face these requests easily and save yourself from potential litigation charges, court fines, or any other possible legal implications.

3. Document Organizational Commitments & Discussions

Archiving ensures retention of organizational knowledge and conversations, even after an employee leaves. Employing a multi-data archival system ensures you can save data from multiple sources, keep track of it, and use it when required.

4. Fast e-Discovery

You get quick access to important data when you need it. Data archiving makes it easier to run faster queries and get instant results without redundant data. You also reduce costs required for running extensive e-discovery processes.

Steps To Better Message Archiving Strategy

1. Determine Which Data Must Be Archived

Inventory your data, prioritize it, categorize it, and determine what data needs to be preserved and for how long. You can consult with your legal team, data stakeholders, and your actual needs to identify the data that needs to be archived. Set up the qualification policies that can help you set the rules to automate data archival.

2. Assign a Retention Schedule

Data regulations cite how long you can keep data and also the means to manage privacy. Additionally, the data destruction schedule is as important as the retention policy. Retaining unnecessary and outdated data not only increases cost, but it can require you to provide data during e-Discovery that you otherwise would not have had to provide. Make sure to set the appropriate data retention schedule for each data category and delete it when necessary.

3. Establish A Comprehensive Data Governance Plan

Create a complete data governance plan with an all-inclusive set of procedures and rules. Include the details such as duration of data storage, data benchmarks, the multiple data mediums to be included, and the data access policies.

4. Choose Your Data Archival Solution

When you have established your data archival policies, you should choose the right product to fit your needs and criteria. Consider the available features that are most relevant for your data archival needs. Some features that you can look for include:

Multi-Platform support – Allows you to securely ingest and manage multiple data from the expanding applications tools now in place alongside email.
Secure policy-driven retention that enables authorized users to easily access records, and do so with accountable audit trails of their activity.
Embrace cloud options. They provide the agility, speed, management and security that outpaces almost all on-site archiving deployments.
Fast records search and e-Discovery – Allows you to run orderly and flexible search queries to retrieve archived data in minutes, not days or weeks.

If you are looking to expand your archiving or even just get started with email archiving, we recommend our OneVault multi-data archiving platform. It offers a comprehensive data archival solution that automates archiving from multiple sources such as email, Teams, Zoom, Webex, voicemail and audio recordings. Your data is securely retained, easy to use, encrypted for additional security and then securely destroyed once the data reaches the end of its defined life. This kind of functionality used to be extremely expensive and complicated to manage. OneVault makes multi-data archiving affordable, simple, and secure.

To learn more, pick a time for a one on one discussion today.

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Resources:

What Is Cloud-Based Archiving and Why Is It Important for Businesses?

Is Backup as a Service the solution you should be adopting?