Email Archiving and Journaling

Email archiving and Email journaling are two complementary solutions that work together to provide a comprehensive and reliable approach to email retention and management.

Email archiving provides a way to store and manage email messages in a separate and secure location, ensuring that important messages are not lost or deleted accidentally. It also provides tools for searching and retrieving specific messages when needed, as well as for meeting regulatory requirements for email retention and e-discovery.

On the other hand, email journaling captures a complete and continuous record of all email messages as they pass through an email system or mailbox. This helps ensure that no email messages are missed or lost, providing a more comprehensive and accurate record of email communications.

Email Archiving

Email archiving is the process of capturing, preserving, and securely storing email messages and attachments in an easily retrievable format for long-term retention.

Benefits of Email Archiving

• Compliance with legal, regulatory, or industry requirements
• Quick e-discovery (search and retrieval) during litigation
• Protection against data loss
• Business continuity in the event of outage or disaster

How Email Archiving Works

The email archiving solution will periodically analyze and make copies of available inbound and outbound email messages and store them in a centralized location. It stores the data in a searchable format that preserves the original metadata, such as sender and recipient information, dates, and message content.

A good archiving solution will apply some kind of classification of emails into various categories based on their importance so that the adequate retention policies can be set for these emails. This can be done manually, or it can be automated.

This is recommended because not every email requires archival. Most emails have a short life in terms of relevance, and thus there is no need to archive such emails. Likewise, there will be some emails may need to be retained for three years before there are permanently deleted, whereas some other emails may have to be retained for five years, and so on.

The archiving software may also include features for managing storage, setting retention policies, and enforcing data security measures.

Email Journaling

Email journaling is the practice of automatically capturing and archiving copies of all email communications sent and received by a particular user or group of users. The system stores the captured emails in a central location, such as a journaling mailbox or an email archiving system, for future reference, legal compliance, or other purposes.

Unlike email archiving, which is a periodic process, email journaling is a continuous process. This means that email journaling can capture a more complete and accurate record of all email communications than email archiving alone.

Benefits of Email Journaling

• Maintain a complete track of email communications for compliance and regulatory reasons
• Keep complete and immutable (untampered) record of all email communications for employees in important positions to guard against data leak

How Email Journaling Works

The journaling process typically involves setting up a journaling mailbox, and configuring email servers to forward copies of all emails to that mailbox. The forwarded emails are stored in a format that preserves their original metadata, such as sender and recipient, timestamps, and message content.

It typically operates at the email gateway, so it captures and records every incoming and outgoing email, maintaining an untampered record of all the communications. Even if an email is deleted by an employee, the journaling system always has a copy of it. This can be useful to guard against data leak.

For example, let us say an employee sends an email containing sensitive information to a someone and then immediately deletes the email from the “Sent” folder of the mailbox. If email archiving is the only solution in place, it will not be able to capture the deleted email. However, if email journaling is in place, it will capture and retain this email in the journaling mailbox or central email archiving system, providing a complete record of the communication.

The continuous nature of email journaling makes it a more reliable and comprehensive method for capturing and retaining email data. It ensures that no email messages are missed or lost. This is particularly important for organizations that need to comply with regulatory requirements for email retention and data security.

Summary

Email archiving and journaling are critical processes for any organization that relies on email communications. While email archiving focuses on capturing individual emails or email threads for long-term retention, email journaling captures a complete record of all email communications that pass through a specific email server or mailbox. Both solutions provide significant benefits in terms of compliance, e-discovery, and data security, and organizations should carefully evaluate their needs and requirements to determine which solution is best for them.

By combining email archiving and journaling, organizations can benefit from the strengths of each solution. For example, email archiving can be used to store important or sensitive emails for long-term retention and e-discovery purposes, while email journaling can be used to capture a real-time record of all email communications for monitoring and analysis.

Useful Links

• What is Email Journaling and Why Do You Need It?

• Journaling vs. Mailbox Archiving – What You Need to Know

• Why Email Journaling is Necessary for Your Business