Survey Says: IT Execs Resist Email Archiving

By Greg McNevin

November 12, 2008: According to a new survey from Proofpoint, IT executives are still not taking the need for email archiving seriously, with nearly 60 percent of those surveyed having no email archiving solution in place.

Furthermore, according to the unified email security, archiving and data loss prevention solution provider, a further 15 percent have no plans to deploy an archiving solution.

Conducted by Osterman Research, the survey canvassed the opinions of 130 IT managers and executives who manage an average of 17,000 email users. Compounding the problems associated with the distinct lack of email archiving, the survey found that a worrying 39 percent of companies had been ordered by a court or regulatory body to produce employee email in the past 12 months.

Previous Osterman research from April adds even more concern to the lack of archiving, as back then it found that nearly two-thirds of organisations had been ordered to produce employee email or instant messages at some point, while a slightly higher percentage referred back to email archives or backups to support their innocence in a legal case.

“It is shocking to see such a high percentage of enterprises that have not yet deployed an archiving solution and even more troubling to see that some have no plans for deployment,” said Sandra Vaughan, senior vice president of marketing and products for Proofpoint.

“Recent legal cases, including the one involving Larry Ellison and Oracle, should be reason enough to make sure a solution is in place to meet e-discovery demands.”

Vaughan says that it will unfortunately take more cases and lost time and money before some organisations realise that they are putting themselves at serious risk by not adopting a technology solution to help preserve email records and produce email in a timely manner.

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