Stuck between a rock and a hard place

Whether you believe that you need to keep all mail forever, or whether you wish you could purge all memory of mail the minute after sending, you should pull your head out of the sand and take some proactive steps:

1) Make sure that everyone on your corporate e-mail system is aware of how important e-mail can be in a legal dispute. Most folks are probably following the U.S. vs. Microsoft trial, but for anyone who has missed the strategic role that e-mail plays in this case I'll spell it out! The assertion made in this trial is, simply, that e-mail can represent corporate policy just as effectively as a written memorandum can. This doesn't mean you should cut down on e-mail, but it does mean that you should think about what you say.

If you want to crack ribald jokes with your friends or talk about how boneheaded a corporate strategy is, use your personal e-mail account on your home ISP so that your mail doesn't have that official appearance.

Hint: your security officer may go into a conniption fit (this is a technical term) if you suggest that people should be able to read POP3 and IMAP mail through your firewall.

2) Instrument your mail backbone so that you have the option, if necessary, of catching a copy of e-mail as it passes through the network. For inter-mail-system traffic, this is a fairly simple task, as any competent e-mail backbone can do this for you. But when you're inside a groupware system such as Exchange or Notes and the traffic never leaves the server, you may have a bigger problem on your hands.

Invest in some proactive research so that if the word comes down that you've got to do this, you understand how hard it's going to be and how much money it's going to cost.

3) Sit down with your operations manager and try and figure out where all those backup tapes are and how long they've been kept. A lot of sane companies like to make off-site backups, some of which are kept forever. Some folks cycle their backup tapes in a few weeks. Unless you know what's happening with those tapes, you could be in for an unpleasant surprise some day.

Make sure that computer operations is in sync with the e-mail network managers about how long you're keeping backups and how important this could be. If operations changes something, you need to know about it.

So: did anyone actually talk to their counsel about this? What did they say? Or are you hoping that ostrich-with-head-in-sand is the most expedient way?

Joel Snyder is a senior partner with Opus One, a consulting firm in Tucson, Arizona. He spends most of his time on the road helping people build larger, faster, better, and more reliable networks. His professional travels have taken him from San Francisco to St. Petersburg, where he always carries his trusty Macintosh and modem, neither of which have cute names. He is also a member of the Network World Test Alliance and writes extensively on networking topics. Reach him at joel.snyder@opus1.com.

Why you need an e-mail retention policy
Network World, 5/4/98

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