A very common resolution made at the start of a new year is “Get more organized.” That’s a good mantra for businesses as well as individuals, especially when it comes to formalizing a process for records retention and retrieval. It’s time to get organized, and the U.S. federal government has given you new incentive to do so.

Last December, updated Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) went into effect. These rules cover the use of electronic records in federal lawsuits. In short, any business that could be involved in federal litigation is required to retain records in a consistent fashion and be able to produce these records as evidence in the case, if need be.

Lest you think this doesn’t apply to your organization, consider this: most cases involving businesses are federal cases, as the laws covering employment, discrimination, harassment, interstate commerce and so on are federal laws. Thus, even a small company should prepare itself for the possibility of litigation some day. And as this story in Network World shows, very few companies are fully prepared.

E-mail and instant messages are two areas in particular that you need to address, especially since these communication media are likely to handle information that could be required in a lawsuit. For instance, messages containing offensive jokes can be central to a harassment lawsuit.

In addition to the FRCP, regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes-Oxley might dictate extra care in the use of electronic records. Do you know what is passing through your e-mail system each day? Can you recognize if you have a problem with inappropriate information being sent via e-mail? Unfortunately, ignorance of the situation is not an excuse anymore.

InBoxer is one company that has developed unique technology to tackle the problem of scrutinizing the content of e-mail messages. InBoxer was founded by a couple of technologists who worked on speech recognition technology for Dragon Systems. CEO Roger Matus says that the same types of algorithms that analyze speech and turn it into text can be applied toward analyzing the content of e-mail messages for the purpose of discovery.

Companies use InBoxer to scrutinize e-mail and attachments, applying about 70 different types of analyses, and then presenting sorted and searched messages to compliance managers. The messages can be searched in a near real-time mode. InBoxer does this by taking a copy of every message as it goes by (for example, by applying “journal mode” in Microsoft Exchange) and then applying a robust set of about 70 tests to come up with risk scores. If a message has a high risk score, a compliance officer is notified to inspect the message more closely. For example, InBoxer can look for social security numbers or customer account numbers in e-mail documents. If they are found, the message can be further scrutinized manually.

Linda Musthaler is a principal analyst with Essential Solutions Corporation.