Observations on E-Mail Archiving

• An e-mail archive is a repository kept in a non-production environment to provide secure retention of messages for compliance and operational purposes.
• It is not good policy to treat backups made for disaster recovery as an archive (or for records retention purposes [B. Bake])
• E-Mail messages that are records pertaining to business transactions, activities, operations, or rights and their attachments should be maintained in the archive.
• Transitory e-mails such as "thanks" messages, spam and employees' personal mail should not be archived.
• Confidential, proprietary and attorney-client privileged information should not be conveyed or received via e-mail.
• E-mail is a transmission mechanism, not a unique record type with regard to retention and archives.
• Message and attachment contents determine retention time according to pre determined record schedules.

Summarized from: "What You Should Know About E-Mail Archiving," TRANSFORM, Taking Control of Content & Business Processes, [http://transformmag.com]. (August 2004)