While risk can come in many flavors, as discussed narrowly in today's summary Email archiving: Necessity or pleasure three types stand out with regard to email archives:
- Fines from government or industry regulation and oversight;
- Punitive damages from litigation;
- Accountability of who directed whom to do what, when.
Dependent on the industry (or often geography) it's perceived risk or lack thereof that drives the pace of email archive investments, at least initially. For example, in the late 1990's SEC rule 17A-4 was put into place and required exchange members, brokers and dealers to keep track of and archive electronic communications like instant messages and emails. It's not surprising that the financial services industry responded (although some firms were slow) and implemented risk reduction measures in the form of straightforward email archiving systems.
Other less regulated industries --like pharmaceutical-- or way at the other end of the perceived risk spectrum --such as retail-- were much slower to respond, largely because oversight agencies weren't pushing them and the perceived risk was lower. However, as firms are learning, the risk of damages from litigation can be enormous.
Wikibon case studies clearly show that while organizations are learning risks are often more a function of corporate asset value (i.e. how much can lawyers extract) versus industry regulation, those industries that are less regulated seem to be more willing to trade risk abatement for email function. Specifically, we've seen organizations add in substantially enhanced email function as part of an archiving project but sacrifice (for budget and complexity reasons) rolling out the archive to international divisions, subsidiaries and/or lower level employees-- leaving themselves exposed.
Here's the irony. Organizations that implement a simple, effective archiving system broadly across the organization, that may in fact sacrifice incremental email enhancements, are probably less at risk than those companies who have chosen not to roll out email archives for major parts of their user population yet will still fund email enhancements to placate business users.
Action Item: Generally, email archives are being justified on the basis of risk mitigation and they must deliver on that promise first and foremost. Keep it simple. To succeed, focus initial email archiving functionality on risk abatement broadly across the organization and avoid unnecessary complexity.
Action Item:
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