Email Retention Policy

Email Retention Policy

Usually refers to all means of communication that is either stored or shared via electronic mail or instant messaging technologies. Since the recently grow of e-commerce, the need to storage and regulate electronic communication is important to the company. All the information acquired by this means, should be revised and categorized in different storage areas, depending on the importance of the content. No doing so can create big consequences for the institution, Critical information lost; keeping documents, restricted and financial retributions are some of the problems that fallow a lack of policies to enforce security in electronic communications.

“Any email that contains information in the scope of the Business Record Keeping policy should be treated in that manner. All email information is categorized Into four main classifications with retention guidelines:

Administrative Correspondence (4 years)

Fiscal Correspondence (4 years)

General Correspondence (1 year)

Ephemeral Correspondence (Retain until read, destroy)”                            Email Retention Policy Created by or for the SANS Institute.(2006).

Such documents that are share via e-mail or instant massaging should be protected. Take the example of Nancy temple”It began with an e-mail, a reminder to colleagues about the company’s document-retention policy. “It will be helpful to make sure that we have complied with the policy,” wrote Nancy Temple, a Chicago-based in-house lawyer for the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, in October 2001. The policy called for destroying documents when they were “no longer useful” for an audit. But coming as it did, just as government inquiries into the Enron Corp. scandal were about to include Andersen, Enron’s accounting firm, the e-mail led to the criminal prosecution and conviction of the accounting giant for destroying thousands of Enron-related documents, and brought about its collapse” Mauro, T. “One little e-mail, one big legal issue, document-retention policy.” The National Law Journal.( April 25, 2005).

In today business, relation there is a need to not only keep a well-organized retention policy but also monitoring that mail is essential for the protection of the company against a lawsuit.

Employers have a number of reasons to monitor email—more than two million, if you ask Chevron Corporation. Recently, Chevron was required to pay four plaintiffs a total of $2.2 million where plaintiffs’ attorneys found email evidence of sexual harassment. The attorneys had found the “smoking gun” when they located, on Chevron’s email server, an email message that was sent to a number of people within the firm containing a list of jokes about “why beer is better than women.” Had Chevron been monitoring its employees email, it may have seen the problem coming Hartman, L. P. “Workplace Monitoring Can Be Ethical.” Opposing Viewpoints: Technology and Society. Ed. Auriana O. San Diego: Greenhaven Press,( 2002)

Not only are the need to protect the company’s information but to ensure proper communication and other policies not violated within the organization. This required a well plan and execution of this policy to prevent any kind of problem with customers, employees, and government laws. Developing a well planned, enterprise-wide email retention policy helps establish uniform and consistent rules for all email and electronic records. Such a policy outlines email content, sets retention and deletion criteria and provides the flexibility to accommodate litigation holds and enable role-based user access. Leveraging a robust information governance solution also, helps simplify the management of this process. The ideal solution should automate retention policy enforcement and task documentation, while providing an archiving and retrieval engine that streamlines an organization’s ability to locate messages for audits, litigation, and e-discovery in a timely and cost-effective manner. By doing so, organizations can reduce costs, improve regulatory compliance, enhance data access, reduce the risk of litigation and improve IT performance without increasing costs.

Source Citation:

Mauro, Tony. “One little e-mail, one big legal issue. (Document-retention policy).” The National Law Journal. (April 25, 2005): NA. Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center. Gale. Brigham Young University – Utah. 1 Dec. 2009 <http://find.galegroup.com/ovrc/infomark.do?&contentSet=IAC-Documents&type=retrieve&tabID=T004&prodId=OVRC&docId=A132081986&source=gale&srcprod=OVRC&userGroupName=byu_main&version=1.0&gt;.

Email Retention Policy Created by or for the SANS Institute (2006).