Why are Archiving and Compliance Resources Important?

With corporations accumulating terabytes of data, email messages, files, and other digital assets, archiving and compliance resources help manage them. Most organizations can’t build their archiving solution, so they seek third-party software applications to keep them compliant and organize massive amounts of data.

To simplify the archiving process, cloud-based systems use their unlimited storage space to transfer information from the local environment to the cloud provider, where authorized employees can access it. The archiving system automatically organizes it, applies security controls on data, and provides an interface where specific employees can access archives in the future.

Data archives are necessary for compliance and future investigations after a data breach. Numerous cyber threats aim to steal, or corrupt data, and data archives can be used to determine the vulnerability and exploit used to steal it. Libraries also provide evidence for litigation for subpoenaed information during litigation. Compliance regulations require archives for incident response and investigations into a cyber event.

Why Do Businesses Need an Archiving and Compliance Resource Solution?

When finding a cloud archiving solution, organizations might think that having a backup process is enough. Backups are necessary for compliance and disaster recovery, but backups are necessary for quick retrieval and restoration of data after it’s corrupted or accidentally deleted. 

Archives work differently than backups. They are backups of data, but old files are often no longer necessary for productivity. Archives aren’t made for quick recovery of data. Instead, they are stored in a way that makes searching for specific information fast and convenient for an investigator. Usually, it’s a legal team with access to archives, but they could be available for stakeholders with high-privilege access to corporate secrets and company intellectual property.

Usually, backups have a short retention period of potentially a month or slightly longer, but archives have a much longer retention period. Archives could go back a decade so that legal people or stakeholders can find important information and events. Backups aren’t meant for searching for specific information. Still, archives give a researcher or investigator complete control of a search query so that they can find particular information across terabytes of data from years ago.

To simplify the archiving process, cloud-based systems use their unlimited storage space to transfer information from the local environment to the cloud provider, where authorized employees can access it.

Benefits of Using a Hosted Archiving Solution

Instead of hosting data locally, cloud-based archiving solutions provide a more flexible and scalable option. Depending on the organization’s retention period, hosting the archiving solutions locally would be extremely costly. Hosting archived data in the cloud provides the scalability necessary as more data is archived. Still, it only costs a small percentage of money compared to the hardware and infrastructure to host on-premises. 

Aside from having more storage space available, a hosted archiving solution has several more benefits. A few more benefits include:

• An indexed solution that lets authorized users perform fast searches, extract data, and keep organized data set aside for any legal reasons.
• Most large organizations have several compliance and legal requests, so a hosted data archiving solution makes it more efficient and faster for staff to find quickly and export data to respond within the given timeframe.
• Flexible controls for administrators to define a set retention period. This period could be months, years, or decades.
• Email integration is critical so administrators can easily archive messages and file attachments. The flexibility of a solution such as ArcTitan lets organizations archive emails automatically so that administrators do not need to create archives manually.
• Automatically scale storage resources when necessary. An excellent archiving solution uses the cloud so that administrators can quickly add capacity to account for a growing business and additional accumulated email messages.
• Legacy systems must integrate well with an archiving solution. One benefit of a good archiving solution is its ability to archive older system data so that organizations have full coverage of their files and email messages for compliance regulations.
• Although backups should be the primary way administrators recover data, archives can also be used in disaster recovery if necessary. Archives are suitable for failover if primary backups are unavailable or corrupted.

Essential Features in a Good Archiving and Compliance Resources Solution

Data archiving solutions have numerous benefits, but your chosen solution should have features that offer every possible advantage. The ArcTitan archiving service has several features that provide a full range of benefits and keep an organization compliant with today’s regulatory requirements.

Any solution you choose should integrate fairly quickly with your current environment infrastructure, but some available features make a solution like ArcTitan beneficial for any organization. A few key features available with ArcTitan that make enterprise email archiving effective, convenient, and secure:

• Office 365 integration: Many large organizations work with Office 365 for its Outlook application, and ArcTitan integrates with the Outlook workflow so that administrators can automatically take archives of employee messages and file attachments.
• Fast indexing: Having extensive archives takes standard querying systems too long to find specific information. The ArcTitan solution indexes data in a way that makes searches lightning-fast and provides instant access to search results. The Outlook plugin makes it convenient for employees to perform searches.
• Convenient administration: Authorization tools give administrators control of staff members' archived data access. Flexible configurations give administrators control over the archiving solution and how users can access archived data.
• Better security: Cloud-hosted archiving is one of the most secure solutions. Security is essential for compliance but also for data privacy and data protection. ArcTitan keeps files and email messages safe from unauthorized access, and data is encrypted at rest, meaning it’s encrypted when data is stored.
• Cost savings: The savings in cloud costs save organizations millions in standard infrastructure necessary for large data silos. ArcTitan only costs organizations a few dollars per user per month.
• Stay compliant: Compliant solutions ensure that organizations comply with GDPR, HIPAA, PCI, and other regulatory requirements, and ArcTitan stays ahead of compliant issues by following the latest standards for all primary regulations.

Compare ArcTitan and its competitors, or book a free demo. Start a free trial with ArcTitan to improve your disaster recovery, compliance, and data protection.