A 'keep data forever' mentality could be beneficial for companies

Contributed by Debbie Howlett (Monday, July 12, 2010) | Category : Email archiving

One area IT departments struggle with, according to an InformationWeek blog, is data retention, specifically in regards to email.

With email retention, companies need to decide whether they wish to store emails infinitely or for a set amount of time. While having a finite time period for retention could lead to lower costs, as increased storage space is directly related to cost, a company could potentially experience more problems in doing so.

Firstly, finite retention requires a company to decide how long and which files it chooses to keep. This can become problematic in time, as employees could save emails themselves, which the deletion process might not catch. As the blog explains, software does exist to fix these errors, it does cost extra, which slowly eliminates the savings a company has made by choosing the finite option.

Secondly, finite retention could become problematic when dealing with email compliance. Even with a retention and deletion process in place, emails could be missed or accidentally deleted, which could result in major fines or even court sanctions. Again, these potential subsequent costs cut into the savings a company has made with such a retention process.

Thus, keeping data forever, while potentially being more costly at first, could provide better savings in the long term for companies. A recent example of a company receiving fines for having dysfunctional data retention is investment firm Piper Jaffray, which the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority fined $700,000 for not keeping emails during a six-year period.