Data Retrieval to Support M365 Email Archiving

Backups aren’t the only storage requirement for business continuity. Email archiving is an additional step in ensuring your old data is never actually deleted but doesn’t take too much expensive local storage space. Instead of deleting data, email archiving software moves data to a secure location where it can be retrieved when necessary. You might need archived data for legal discovery, compliance audits, or data recovery when backups are not viable. Email archiving strengthens data protection and business continuity during critical data loss and emergency recovery.

Backups vs. Archives

Most administrators know that backups are critical for data protection and business continuity, but email archives differ from backups. Backup services take a copy of your data and store copies of files and other data securely. The secure location could be in the cloud or locally on the network (e.g., on a NAS or SAN), but the storage necessary to contain extra data costs additional money. 

The benefit of backups is quick data recovery. Administrators can recover data from a copy in backup storage if a user loses a file or accidentally deletes it. After a significant crash resulting in data corruption, administrators can restore productivity quickly to avoid additional revenue loss.

Archives are similar, but the process is a different workflow. For most businesses, old email messages are no longer needed.  Email archives take a data backup but then delete the original copy in its original storage location. Companies have a copy of their files, but they no longer waste money and network resources, keeping a local copy of old unused files. Email archive solutions also store files in an indexed state, which makes them searchable at high performance. If you are familiar with databases, you know that tables holding data have indexes to speed up search performance. The same happens when email archiving software takes a copy of email files.

Email archives are mainly used when years-old data must be reviewed for specific corporate purposes. If you delete these files, you lose access to the data entirely. Email archives are helpful when freeing up storage space, but you can’t delete data altogether. Compliance regulations often require corporations to keep backups of their files for auditing purposes, so many businesses have no choice but to archive rather than delete files. Storing archives in the cloud also allows your storage to scale as you acquire more data.

Importance of Email Archiving for Data Searches

Suppose you need to find an audit trail of access requests from a year ago. The reasoning behind a data search could be from a data breach, discovery during litigation, or another corporate reason. Standard backups restrict searches and are often bundled as incremental files. Incremental backups include only files changed after the last backup, so they do not include all data. It’s not uncommon for some files to remain unchanged for months, so backups would not contain these files unless searches are done on a full backup of the entire system.

Backups aren’t indexed or built for searches, but email archives are specifically designed for performance in data searches. Email archiving systems have a search function where anyone with access permissions can find data and its properties. In the example of an audit search, administrators can search for specific data, filter out unwanted data, and review it for specific information based on research requirements and goals.

Corporations are also often defendants or plaintiffs in lawsuits. Legal researchers will find all necessary evidence to defend corporate interests or strengthen corporate claims during the discovery phase. Legal researchers aren’t always technology savvy, so they need a user-friendly interface to perform searches. They also need fast searches so that the discovery process does not take too long. Email archiving services have an interface for authorized users to conduct searches, and indexing makes the search process fast.

Integration with Outlook

Most businesses use Outlook as a client application for users to retrieve, read, and store their email messages. The email archiving solution that you use should work seamlessly with Microsoft Outlook. Not only will integration be required for corporate workflows, but incorporation with Outlook will also make a solution more intuitive for the end-user. Users in Outlook can manually back up their data, and administrators can set scheduled email archives to back up data at timed intervals automatically.

Outlook loses its performance when users store too many files and email messages in their PST storage, so archiving user data from Outlook can speed up email for users with older devices. Long-term employees might see performance degradation as they accumulate thousands of email messages, so email archiving old messages no longer necessary for job functions solves some performance issues for employees.

Instead of relying on administrators to recover old emails, email archiving solutions integrated into Outlook give users the tools to restore files. This feature reduces overhead for administrators, especially administrators with thousands of users to support. Administrators have complete control over data access to protect email files and keep users from unauthorized data access, but users can archive and recover their files as needed.

Administrators and users might think that archiving with Outlook features is sufficient. Still, many of the embedded backup and archiving features in Microsoft Outlook do not support compliance and search performance. Outlook is a great email client, but it isn’t built to support data retrieval, compliance regulations, and fast auditing and legal discovery searches.

Cost Savings on Email Storage

Because your organization moves email files from local storage to a cloud-based bucket, using an email archiving solution frees up expensive internal network resources. As mentioned, backups take a copy of your data rather than move it to a new location. Backups are necessary but can be a much more costly way to store old data. With email archiving, your email data is moved to a safe location in the cloud where it can be retrieved when necessary.

Storage space is expensive, especially local storage. Users storing their PST Outlook files on their local device drive can potentially run out of working space. Administrators must add working space to the user’s device or delete files to free up space. Deleting files is often not an option for businesses that need to keep files for years. Email archiving solutions free up space without causing any data loss and compliance violations.

Email archiving solutions reduce costs during audits, incident response after a data breach, and research into claims during legal proceedings. With standard backups, administrators need to restore files to a temporary location and leave researchers to search for files without any convenient interface. Archiving email gives your users a way to search for data more conveniently. Not only is searching email files more convenient, but administrators can also set permissions on data only to allow specified users to search and open authorized data.

How ArcTitan Can Help

TitanHQ offers ArcTitan, an email archiving software that fully manages data storage, backups, search features, and compliance. It’s compliant with GDPR, so businesses can more quickly find and remove customer data when required. Search quickly to find data that must be used in litigation or discovery during legal proceedings and provide researchers with the tools they need to find all vital information.

Read more about what ArcTitan can do for you, or sign up for a free trial to see how it works for your organization.