Managing Emails Securely with Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft Exchange Server is one of the most well-known email servers used by many corporate firms to manage emails with Outlook. Microsoft offers both Standard and Enterprise versions, meeting the needs of small businesses with few employees as well as enterprise-level companies. Microsoft Exchange can be used both as a cloud service and within an organization. The on-premises version of Microsoft Exchange Server is installed in a company's data center and runs on its local infrastructure.

Email Archiving: Securing Your Email Data

Emails contain a vast amount of critical information, including data related to contracts, orders and returns, communications with suppliers, and other confidential information about the company and its employees. To ensure compliance with storage laws and continuous business success, this data needs to be protected. For this reason, email archiving has long been a necessity for all companies using Microsoft Exchange Server, regardless of their size.

The main reason for establishing long-term email archiving is to ensure compliance or to keep the volume of email data in mailboxes at a low level to reduce pressure on the email server. Regardless of the reason, archiving has become an important aspect of any Exchange installation.

In their efforts to protect critical email data, many companies are turning back to the integrated options provided by Outlook and Microsoft Exchange Server for archiving emails. We will continue to explain how suitable an option this is for protecting your data and what other options are available for you.

These Are the Email Archiving Options Provided by Microsoft Exchange Server

Microsoft offers a series of options to ensure the security of emails in your Exchange Server environment (Standard or Enterprise).

• PST Archiving or Automatic Archiving: Users can move emails to PST files in Microsoft Outlook and store them locally on their own computers or in the cloud.
• The "Archive" button in Microsoft Outlook
• The "Archive" button allows users to move emails to an archive folder. Emails remain in the Outlook mailbox; only their storage location changes.
• In-Situ Archiving (Also Known as In-Place Archiving): An archive mailbox is a separate mailbox with its own storage space, allowing emails to be moved. This archive mailbox should be set up by an administrator.

These archiving methods may be sufficient to meet professional email archiving needs and help fulfill legal requirements for preserving business-critical data. However, the short answer is that they generally are not.

A professional, platform-independent email archiving solution such as MailStore Server allows you to securely store your emails in a centralized archive in a format that is faithful to the original, protected against tampering, and permanently available for any period of time.

The local archiving features of Microsoft Exchange Server cannot do this. PST files are typically distributed locally on users' computers and are not protected against intentional or accidental deletion in any way.

Similarly, the "Archive" button does not provide any protection against emails being altered or lost since emails are only moved to another insecure folder within the Outlook mailbox.

On the other hand, In-Situ archiving has many features of a professional email archiving solution with comprehensive functions such as automatic archiving procedures and legal hold in litigation. However, In-Situ archiving has a significant disadvantage common to all local Microsoft archiving options: it is dependent on the availability and uninterrupted operation of Microsoft Exchange. If Microsoft Exchange fails, In-Situ archiving becomes unusable and access to the archive mailbox is no longer possible. In the worst-case scenario, this can lead to data loss.

Email Archiving with MailStore Server

MailStore Server is an independent email archiving software specifically developed for small and medium-sized businesses. It is easy to install, can be set up within a few minutes, seamlessly adapts to existing infrastructures, and is compatible with nearly all standard email systems. You can benefit from the following functions and advantages of the software:

• Permanently reduce the load on the Exchange server: After archiving, emails can be deleted from mailboxes based on rules, allowing the volume of email data in Microsoft Exchange Server to remain at a consistently low level. For example, all emails older than eighteen months can be deleted from mailboxes on a daily basis after successful archiving.
• Integrity of archiving provided through journaling: A company using Microsoft Exchange can ensure the integrity of the archive by setting up journal archiving, allowing all emails to be archived as soon as they are sent or received. This provides the advantage of guaranteeing the integrity of the archive even if users delete emails from their mailboxes.
• Archiving of existing emails (mailbox archiving): MailStore Server also allows the archiving of existing emails from various sources. MailStore can archive individual, multiple, or even all mailboxes directly, as well as emails from shared folders, shared mailboxes, and local email clients. Since MailStore can archive all standard file formats such as EML and PST, the file format of emails to be archived plays only a minor role.

More Advantages for Your Company

For Administrators

• Simplified backup and restore processes
• Up to 70% reduction in storage requirements (e.g., through deduplication and compression)
• Central storage location for all PST files
• Reduction in IT team workload through self-service functions for users

For the Company

• Help with compliance with the EU's #GDPR and Turkey's #KVKK regulations
• Full protection of all emails through daily logs and encryption
• No more email data loss
• Increased productivity
• Modest purchase and operational costs

For Users

• Fast, full-text searches in all your emails and file attachments
• No more issues related to mailbox quotas
• Recover lost emails with a single click

Source: Email Archiving for Microsoft Exchange Server - MailStore