Compliance Regulations for Email Archiving: FRCP

FRCP Stands for Federal Rule of Civil Procedure. With FRCP amendments, which went into effect on December 1, 2006, mandate that organization must be prepared for electronic discovery. Organizations must manage their electronically stored information (ESI), so that it can be produced in a timely and complete manner when necessary. This includes legal matters. Here are a few things that have become reality:

• The courts no longer tolerate an organization that has not yet implemented timely programs to accurately retrieve email.
• Just implementing a policy for retention is not enough. You must prove that they are enforced at all levels.
• The penalties for failing to meet the FRCP deadlines can be much larger than putting a system in place. In cases where it failed it may lead loosing of the law suit.
• Limited staff and resources are not excuses for missing deadlines, even for small organizations.

The focus is more on retrieval on emails apart from just storing the emails. The retrieval of emails on demand is become the most important aspect. There are 3 important aspects of FRCP from email archiving solution point of view

• The email archiving solution should not modify the original content of emails messages including its metadata information. The metadata information should be kept intact.
• The email archiving solution should be able to export the archived email messages in its original format.
• The email archiving solution provides simple and powerful search mechanism so that its easier to search on the archived message anytime.