Business Continuity: Email Backup and Archiving

In recent years, with the digital transformation of internal business processes, there has been a sharp increase in critical business information stored electronically in global economies. This data can be stored within the company's own systems (internal) and cloud services (private or public clouds). Additionally, hybrid approaches where data is stored and processed both internally and via cloud services are becoming increasingly common. Maintaining this data in a permanently usable state is extremely important for the business success of any company and forms the core objective of any corporate IT strategy. In most cases, a failure of the IT infrastructure and the unavailability of important data can disrupt operations and even jeopardize a company's success. If lost data cannot be recovered, the scale of the loss could even threaten the existence of a company.

There is also an economic sanction risk if the legal regulations regarding the storage of business-related data are violated. This is because, depending on the country and sector, emails must be processed and stored in a permanently usable form according to changing legal and regulatory requirements over time. This is particularly applicable to highly regulated sectors such as healthcare, finance, government institutions, and educational institutions. In some cases, violations may even lead to legal proceedings under civil law.

There are many reasons for the malfunction or unavailability of data, ranging from simple user errors to intentional manipulation (e.g., malicious deletion of data by employees or cyberattacks from outside the company), natural disasters (e.g., flooding after heavy rain), or other unforeseen causes (e.g., fire in the company building). Similarly, if the infrastructure of the cloud service provider used is affected, business operations can be interrupted.

What is Business Continuity?

Companies manage these types of risks as part of their Business Continuity (BC) strategies. Here, activities and processes are defined to prevent a company's operational capacity from being interrupted or failing, or to get the business back up and running as quickly as possible in an emergency situation. Since business processes and IT systems can change over time, the effectiveness of this preventive package should be regularly reviewed. In this way, necessary adjustments can be identified.

A significant part of business continuity management involves ensuring the security and recovery of critical business data and all IT networks and systems through Disaster Recovery. Backups and email archiving provide valuable support in this regard.

Backups and Email Archiving as Part of Disaster Recovery

Backups store a company's data (e.g., data from used communication programs or ERP software) at a specific time. If data is lost, subsets of data or entire systems or servers can be restored from the backup. However, backup units only reflect the data that existed at the time the backup was created. Changes made after the backup are not recorded. This means that backups must be made regularly, taking into account costs and benefits, to ensure that the backed-up data remains as up-to-date as possible.

In addition to regular backups, it is recommended to use a professional email archiving solution. Considering that emails are still the most important communication tool and can hold a large number of business-critical documents, it is important to ensure that these data are fully and securely backed up for many years, so that all emails can be accessed in the event of a loss. A positive side effect: A professional email archiving solution can help a company meet its data privacy requirements and provide support in terms of tax and trade regulations specific to certain countries and industry sectors. Don't forget that archives should also be backed up!

In addition, an email archiving solution can help simplify backup and recovery processes related to the email server: keeping the amount of data stored on the email server low means that less time and storage space is needed for the backup process - which means you can restore your email server from backup units much faster after a disaster.

Objectives

Email Backups Email Archiving

Remove mailbox quotas

Remove PST files

Reduce storage requirements through consolidation and compression

Reduce the workload of email servers and simplify backup and recovery processes

Provide fully protected, tamper-proof, and long-term email storage

Help meet compliance requirements

Help with eDiscovery scenarios

Enable fast searches via full-text indexing of emails

End users: Quickly and easily restore lost emails

Fully valid

Valid - partially

Partially valid

Less relevant

Not applicable

These terms in the table are based on the fundamental concepts of backups and email archiving. The functions of backup and email archiving solutions may vary depending on the provider.

Use Cases and Special Application Areas

In practice, various scenarios can justify the distribution of a professional email archiving solution as an important component of business continuity and an ideal complement to an existing backup system.

For example, if the email server fails (regardless of whether it is stored internally or in the cloud), it can be restored via a backup. However, all emails received and sent between the last backup and the server failure are missing. A properly configured email archive can solve this problem and ensure that the entire email inventory is accessible.

Another common scenario is the unavailability or loss of business-critical emails on the email server due to a ransomware or malicious software attack. The loss or theft of data not only disrupts business operations but also poses a high risk in terms of compliance with legal retention requirements for business-critical data. An email archiving solution should be able to store all relevant emails and file attachments in a fully, tamper-proof, and permanently accessible form.

Choosing the Right Archiving Strategy

However, choosing the right archiving strategy is very important. Professional email archiving solutions allow businesses to choose from different strategic archiving approaches based on their needs. If legal compliance is the main focus, journaling-based email archiving may be the best option. Alternatively, if the primary goal is to free up the email server, mailbox archiving with specific deletion rules may be a better option. A combination of both approaches is also possible.

In any case, it is important to have a strong search and export functionality that can be self-serviced by users, depending on the configuration. This means that users can quickly and easily access old emails again and, if necessary, restore them independently. This eliminates the need for laborious recovery requests made to the IT department to restore emails from backups, reducing the workload on the IT department. Desired results can also be achieved in terms of eDiscovery processes. For example, in a legal case where emails are used as evidence, it may be requested that a staff member or external auditor search through the company's entire email stock and export the relevant records in a standard format if needed.

Conclusion

The continuous availability of data and IT systems is a prerequisite for the ongoing business success of many companies and therefore an indispensable part of corporate strategy. When creating backup policies for emergency situations, many potential risks and security vulnerabilities should be considered. Email archiving can make a valuable contribution to ensuring the security of business-critical data in emails and, together with backups, may be very important when implementing an applicable disaster recovery plan.

Source: Email Archiving: An Important Component of Business Continuity - MailStore