Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Sarbanes-Oxley complicates Lotus Domino admins' lives

In recent years, Domino and other messaging systems administrators have turned to e-mail archiving products to deal with the massive amount of e-mail they must process. That effort has been further complicated -- for public companies at least -- by the onslaught of Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) standards for corporate accountability. Increasingly, e-mail administrators are forced to track documents, e-mail, even instant messages, with an eye toward the day their data may be requested by investigators.

E-mail archiving products are key, but are just one piece of the puzzle. Creating corporate policies that determine which e-mail to archive is also critical, Denise Reier said. She is vice president of messaging product marketing for the Legato Software division of EMC Corp., Hopkinton, Mass. "E-mail has been the smoking gun in many [corporate criminal investigations]," noted Reier.

But the value of e-mail can vary greatly. E-mail is used to negotiate contracts and discuss key corporate matters, but it's also used to set up lunch dates and to pass jokes. Some companies retain every e-mail for the maximum period of time required by the law, and some are fine-tuning their retention policies, organizing their e-mail into human resource, legal and other manageable areas. In all cases, e-mail archives must be able to withstand scrutiny in a court of law that it is accurate and complete.

Sarbanes-Oxley complicates Lotus Domino admins' lives

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