Another Case of Lost Email
Another Case of Lost Email
It seems that every day our newspapers carry a story that involves lost email. This case involves the Governor of North Caroline, his wife and leading officials at North Carolina State University.
From an IT perspective, the following actions and results from this case are very important to understand:
1. Although the matter is currently active, the email in question dates back to 2005. This raises the important issue of email retention and accessibility. Are you able to retrieve email that is years old? In this case the IT staff was asked to retrieve email that was over four years old.
2. IT does not get input into the matter. Legally, the email was asked for, and it is IT’s job to find it. What this means is that IT needs to be working with its organization policy committee on such issues as email retention, so there is clear understanding of how long email is to be saved and the cost to retrieve it.
3. Finally, should the email not be found, as is the situation in this case, then the judge can issue an adverse judgment, which basically tells the jury that they can assume the worst because key email has been obviously destroyed to protect those being accused. This negatively impacts IT who could not find the email and the entire organization as well.
Mimosa Systems has a solution for keeping email secure and accessible long term. If your organization is still not sure if it needs to archive email, then I recommend you forward this article to upper management. I would hate to see your IT staff being forced to search for email it cannot find and suffering for all the lost time and negative results.
