As already indicated in the last article on legally compliant e-mail archiving , one of our declared goals is currently to integrate an archiving function into our SecuMail^® e-mail filter system. Now we have the solution in front of us.

Due to the existing legal requirements, as well as many customer demands, we would like to make this service available as soon as possible and have already invested some energy in the search for the right technology and orientation.

Our ambitious plans include the following features:

• Real legal certainty (certified)
• Email Signing
• Retention period of any length
• MX-based delivery or through Fetchmail/pop3 connector
• Full-text search and dispatch directly from the archive
• User
• Synchronization with Active Directory
• Outlook integrated user frontend for search and dispatch

Make or buy?

A consideration that we always like to make.

We could probably easily configure our e-mail servers in such a way that they would also push each e-mail to one of the numerous storage servers. The necessary web frontend would also be feasible.
However, an e-mail archiving system according to our ideas and those of the legislation is much more than just the additional storage of e-mails on another hard drive. Legally compliant e-mail archiving requires, among other things, securitized immutability. In addition, you don’t want to do without one or the other feature for reasons of usability.
So “buy”. But which provider is the right one?
Companies that offer e-mail archiving are a dime a dozen in Germany. However, a large proportion of them are unusable on closer inspection because, for example, they do not take the required signing so seriously. Others turn out to be impractical e-mail graves, which, apart from legal certainty, really have no practical use.
Our opinion on this: if we deal with the topic, then it will be decent. We want to offer our customers a service that is not only advantageous on paper!

So far, not a single one of the software solutions we have looked at has been suitable for multi-tenant operations for service providers like us.
In order to still come to our favorite solution, we are currently working with one of our partners, the company Com2. The colleagues at Com2 have been offering an archiving appliance for several years now, which implements pretty much exactly what we had in mind, even if it is currently still without multi-client capability. In order to be able to offer our customers an archiving solution as soon as possible, a number of features still need to be implemented. “We are very interested in using our product with service providers such as WorNet!” says Mr. Kleiböhmer, Managing Director of com2 Communications & Security GmbH.

Easy integration of the user module into Outlook

According to requirements analysis and customer feedback, there are essentially two application scenarios:

1. Your own email infrastructure is left in place and only archiving is switched on, so that you don’t stand there with your pants down in front of the “law”.

2. In addition to complying with legal requirements, you can also gain an additional benefit by using the archive as part of your email infrastructure. This can be done via the freely accessible web frontend or, if MS Outlook is used, by means of a small plugin through which every user can access all archived and fully indexed e-mails (read) and, if necessary, restore them. This could greatly reduce the size of local e-mail inboxes. It would also be conceivable, for example, to delete local e-mail from the server after a few months. Capacity would then no longer be an issue.

Both will be possible with SecuMail^® archiving. Of course, the archiving package will also be available without a spam filter.
Talk to us!

More information about SecuMail^® online archiving

IT remains exciting!

Hannes Wilhelm