Spam & Virus Filtering - SaaS

Email Archiving

Service archiving solution has been designed so that organisations can exceed even the strictest compliance requirements. Secure storage and indexing of data with real-time data replication means that legal discovery requirements are met and that organisations can effortlessly retrieve business critical information at any time.

Archiving process

In addition to the capture and archive of boundary SMTP email passing through the Service, the solution is also able to capture internal mail traffic sent through mail servers such as Exchange, Sendmail, Postfix, etc. Messages are routed from the internal systems of an organisation to the SecureDesk - Mail managed archiving service using a site to site mandated TLS connection.

Message lifecycle is managed according to defined policy. Email and attachments are indexed, encrypted and stored on highly secure servers across the resilient storage infrastructure.

Archiving of inbound, outbound and internal email

Inbound and outbound messages are captured and archived as they pass through the managed service.

Internal email that is required to be archived is sent to the archiving Service using existing SMTP transport, thus negating the need for specialist on-site hardware/ software. Given the additional sensitivity of internal email, the communication between the organisation and the archiving service is secured using TLS (Transport Layer Security), which creates a secure/ encrypted pipe through which email can be sent.

Secure, encrypted storage

The archive service is built on an active-active data centre model. When e-mails reach one of the data centres, they are immediately (within milliseconds) replicated in real-time to a secondary data centre before any archiving takes place. In the event that disaster strikes either data centre, the e-mails are safe as they are held at two locations. The archiving process takes place separately in both data centres; resulting in two copies of the message being stored and two indexes being created. The advantage of this separated dual storage approach is that the accidental modification or deletion of data in one data centre cannot affect the other data centre.

With dual indexes and dual storage, availability of the interface to end-users is also maximised, thus in the event of a data centre outage, the secondary data centre is available to provide service as if nothing has happened.

Tamper-proof read only access

All messages are encrypted after indexing has occurred and before they are committed to storage. Encryption protects the messages from prying eyes, data theft or modification.

Access to data is protected through user authentication to the service over HTTPS links to the Control Panel.

Audit trail of messages and access

Every time a search request is made, the system requires the person performing the search to read and accept the Terms and Conditions. The Terms and Conditions template is configurable for each domain, thus allowing organisations to configure this to meet their company policies. A reason for the search must also be quoted. If the search is activated, then this information, along with the user id, is recorded in the audit database as proof of access.

A further level of oversight is provided by configuring Data Custodians who will be pro-actively notified by e-mail whenever a search is performed on the archive data. The design of the system ensures that individuals cannot by-pass the safe guards, to gain un-audited access to the system.

Audit logs are also recorded every time a message is viewed or released, thus allowing a 360 degree view of all activity to be recorded. Audit logs can be viewed and searched through the user interface, enabling any violations to be quickly detected.

Search via headers, content and attachments

In order to comply with Subject Access Requests (SARs), and the need to enable both compliance officers and end-users to exploit the value of information held within the archive, the service has been enhanced to provide a number of comprehensive search tools.

All messages are fully indexed when they are stored. This includes decompression of zip files and full text indexing of both mail body and attachments. Common document formats such as Word, PDF, RTF, Excel, etc are full text indexed. Once indexed, the search tools may be used to apply searches to the archives.

Delegated authority

Administrators can be created that have access rights over multiple accounts. The process of creating administrators is carefully monitored and controlled to avoid abuse.

Authorised end user access

To give maximum benefit of the archive store, end user access allows individuals to quickly find and retrieve any email or document that has ever been sent or received by them.

Import data to archive via pst

Much of an organisation's data will be stored within local PST folders. This service provides the capability to import PST folders into the archive. Once uploaded the data is indexed,

stored securely and instantly available.

No hardware or software required

As a managed service there is no requirement for hardware or software to be purchased. This then avoids high upfront costs and ongoing capacity planning.

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