Messaging Architects Publishes New White Paper on "UK Email Retention Policies: Guidance on Legal Obligations for the Public and Private Sectors"
Managing email risk in the UK: why email archiving is a legal duty for IT, Legal, HR, Corporate Compliance and other departments.
Edinburgh, UK, November 10, 2010 - Messaging Architects, global experts in email risk management, announced today the availability of a white paper that looks at the responsibility on UK organisations, both from an operational and legal perspective, to be able to store, interrogate and retrieve email based data in order to comply with regulations, and to protect their business.
Entitled "UK Email Retention Policies: Guidance on Legal Obligations for the Public and Private Sectors," the white paper is authored by Stewart Room, Partner at Field Fisher Waterhouse and a recognised authority on data protection, privacy, and compliance. Mr. Room advises IT companies on IT law and is the author of three books that highlight the overlapping space of law and technology, including "Email: Law, Practice and Compliance" (2008). Mr. Room is also closely involved with key organisations in the data security space; he is director of the Cyber Security Challenge UK, and a member of the InfoSec RSA Conference advisory boards.
The paper addresses the needs of all verticals across public and private sectors and looks at email in the context of regulatory compliance, including the Freedom of Information Act, the Data Protection Act, the Companies Act, the Financial Services and Markets Act, and at email in the context of legal mandates as evidence in criminal and civil litigation. Further, it examines the consequences for organisations that fail to manage email records adequately and why the often favoured approach of “deleting everything” is in breach of numerous legal obligations that relate to both the public and private sector.
"Failing to deal with email in a constructive sense is not an option in law; rather, it is a dereliction of legal duty," said Stewart Room. "We hope this white paper will cast light as to what steps organisations can take to ensure proper preservation and management of email."
One challenge the paper notes is the fact that "Unfortunately, the law is in a fragmented state, spread across hundreds of Statutes, thousands of Statutory Instruments and countless pieces of regulatory guidance, standards for best practice and case law. 'Pulling it all together' is beyond the scope of most organisations. But, organisations are expected to meet their legal obligations."
The paper illustrates the need for a proper email management through the adoption of email archiving and retention technology coupled with a clearly defined comprehensive email policy that encompasses acceptable usage, retention and monitoring. To be effective, the enforcement of the policy needs to be automated through the technology.
Compliance and legal issues, such as electronic discovery, legal hold and case management, weigh heavily on the decision and evaluation of an email archiving solution. As the paper highlights, "The key point to remember is that the disclosure or discovery exercise is required by law to deliver the quality and quantity of information that is prescribed by the law, whether this be under litigation principles or regulatory principles, or otherwise. Thus, the lawyer needs to see certain minimum features in an email archiving tool, otherwise the necessary 'guarantee' of legal compliance cannot be provided."
About Messaging Architects
100% employee-owned, Messaging Architects is a global builder of business driven Email infrastructure. We provide software and services that deliver 100% uptime and compliance to millions of end users. Our M+Platform manages the full lifecycle of email – from the moment a message is created through its end of life destruction. M+Platform components scale seamlessly and work together to minimize costs, reduce complexity and eliminate risk. For more information, visit our website.
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