Many Businesses Unaware of New Compliance Laws

June 27, 2007: Organisations operating in the US are unprepared and at risk of running fowl of new federal compliance regulations, at least according to a new survey conducted by messaging security, archiving and compliance solution provider LiveOffice Managed Messaging Services.

In the wake of new amendments made to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), LiveOffice contracted Osterman Research to conduct a survey of 400 IT manegers and end users around the US, finding that while 63 percent have been required to produce an email as part of a legal action, 53 percent admitted they are not prepared to meet the new FRCP requirements.

The amendments require organisations that operate within the United States to manage their electronic data so that it can be produced in a timely and complete manner. This may sound like common sense in today’s legal environment, however, several recent high profile cases such as the Intel/AMD anti-competitive lawsuit AMD and the US Republican Party’s loss of five million emails highlight the fact that many businesses still coast by with insufficient or a complete lack of effective archiving and recovery processes.

The amendments made to the FRCP illustrate the need for effective solutions, however, according to the survey one in three (28.9 percent) of respondents admit they are not even aware of the FRCP regulations in the first place.

The survey also notes that when e-discovery requests arise, IT managers cringe. So much so, that dealing with the tax man was the only thing more unpleasant. More than half of survey respondents actually claimed that they would rather have a cavity filled than respond to an e-discovery request. Ouch.

“The cost of being unprepared is huge, and in some cases, catastrophic,” said Matt Smith, president of LiveOffice. “Instead of spending half a million dollars on reviewing information on hard-to-navigate tape back-up systems, companies can spend less than 10 cents a day, per user, using a web-based system to archive emails.”

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