Having no policy puts you at the mercy of the opposing counsel. IOW, it's a bad strategy. Define a policy, outline the penalties of compliance with the policy, and should some member in your organization attempt to subvert the policy, then deal with that as you would any other violation of corporate policy.
*ASB *(My XeeSM Profile) <http://XeeSM.com/AndrewBaker> *Exploiting Technology for Business Advantage...* * * On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 2:28 PM, Bill Humphries <[email protected]>wrote: > My question would be, if you are in a small business, privately owned > company environment that doesn't host its own email, why would you get > lawyers involved and have a retention policy? It is one thing to develop > policies if you have granular control over your email environment, but if > you just have some people POPing their email to local PST files from some > third-party hosted email system, actually enforcing a retention policy that > would stand up to judicial review is quite tenuous. > > If I was in that environment, my policy would be we have no policy, and if > for some reason your small business gets a discovery request, you can > provide what you have. I don't want some judge threatening someone with > contempt if the company policy states that we maintain email for 90 days, > but I can't find a PST lurking somewhere or an employee loses a laptop that > had the only recent PST on it. > > Bill > > > William Robbins wrote: > > What "it" are you going to tell exactly? Even if you set their client to > do so, what's to keep the user from keeping their "archives" elsewhere? > > I guess the short of where I'm going is that PST is a very myopic answer > that will lead to a very obvious failure to comply. > > - WJR > > > On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 11:25, John Aldrich > <[email protected]>wrote: > >> That's a good question... maybe tell it to auto-archive anything over a >> certain time and then once a month manually delete the archive PST? :-) >> >> >> >> From: William Robbins [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 12:08 PM >> To: NT System Admin Issues >> Subject: Re: Email retention >> >> So how do you plan to enforce a policy for individual PST's? >> >> - WJR >> >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 10:28, John Aldrich <[email protected] >> > >> wrote: >> That's what I'm dealing with here... a bunch of individual PST files on >> everyone's PCs. Which is what got me to thinking about needing a formal >> retention policy. >> >> >> >> From: Roger Wright [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:36 AM >> To: NT System Admin Issues >> Subject: Re: Email retention >> I'm working for a private firm with no formal retention policy. Plus, due >> to limited server storage we have to function with PST files. The big >> problem is that these all become searchable when lawyers require "all >> documentation." What a pain! A mail archiving system would be a Godsend >> but the executives have nixed the proposals so far. >> >> >> Roger Wright >> ___ >> >> When it's GOOD there ain't nothin' like it, and when it's BAD there ain't >> nothin' like it! >> >> >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 10:29 AM, John Aldrich >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> Thanks. I'll advise my boss that we should seek legal guidance on that. >> :-) >> >> >> From: Raper, Jonathan - Eagle [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:24 AM >> To: NT System Admin Issues >> Subject: RE: Email retention >> >> IANAL, however, I believe the sticking point may be (for private firms, >> anyway) that if you ever find yourself in litigation, the lawyers will ask >> what your formal retention policy is… >> >> If they find you on either side of that retention policy, you could be up >> a >> creek, because then they either blast you for not adhering to corporate >> policy, or they say, “Well, since you have emails that are 120 days old, >> even though your policy dictates 90 days, then you must certainly have >> more >> so, give us EVERYTHING.” >> >> If it were up to me, (HA!) I would get corporate counsel to give me a >> guideline, formalize it as corporate policy, and stick to it. >> Jonathan L. Raper, A+, MCSA, MCSE >> Technology Coordinator >> Eagle Physicians & Associates, PA >> [email protected] >> www.eaglemds.com >> ________________________________________ >> From: Don Guyer [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:16 AM >> To: NT System Admin Issues >> Subject: RE: Email retention >> >> I believe we keep 6 months on tape, latest 2 weeks on SAN. >> >> Don Guyer >> Systems Engineer - Information Services >> Prudential, Fox & Roach/Trident Group >> 431 W. Lancaster Avenue >> Devon, PA 19333 >> Direct: (610) 993-3299 >> Fax: (610) 650-5306 >> [email protected] >> From: Jeff Brown [mailto:[email protected]] >> Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2010 10:14 AM >> To: NT System Admin Issues >> Subject: Re: Email retention >> >> Our owner wanted 30 days to be standard retention policy for email. >> Lawyers >> said 90. We keep everything 90 days. >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Jonathan Link <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> There is no standard, it's determined by business requriements and >> regulatory requirements for your industry. >> SOX rules are for publicly traded companies, so you're asking >> contradictory >> questions. >> >> >> >> On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 10:04 AM, John Aldrich >> <[email protected]> wrote: >> What's the standard for email retention for companies which are NOT >> publicly >> traded? What's the SOX rules on email retention? I just helped one of our >> managers open some Outlook data files dating back to 2007 which got me >> thinking about the wisdom of retaining information that long and I wasn't >> sure what the "norm" is for retaining that info. >> >> Thanks... >> >> Thanks, >> John Aldrich >> IT Manager, >> Blueridge Carpet >> 706-276-2001, Ext. 2233 >> >> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~ --- To manage subscriptions click here: http://lyris.sunbelt-software.com/read/my_forums/ or send an email to [email protected] with the body: unsubscribe ntsysadmin
