Compliant and Wise
– Secure Your Email System

Over 80 per cent of business communication is now conducted by email. However well you establish and operate email retention policies, just one confused employee can undo them.

Under the Electronic Transactions Act 2001, emails are official communications for many purposes. In a dispute or suit, you must be able to prove the contents were not altered and when the email arrived at your company - archiving ensures both. As of 2006, under the Corporations Act Australian organisations must retain financial records for seven years. Information covered by the Privacy Act will be more secure when archived immediately. Many states have additional laws covering email retention.

If you do business with a US firm or subsidiary, you would be wise to check with them on additional record-keeping they may need to comply with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Two overall provisions are retaining records for seven years, and ensuring that emails and attachments are preserved as originally written. If you are in a financial business, provisions of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act might affect you.

A secure, searchable database solves and prevents many problems.