Understanding Archiving Requirements: Seven Guiding Principles For A Defensible And Compliant Infrastructure Strategy
" From the GC to the CIO down to the storage administrator, there has been no lack of discussion on new rules for managing data and electronic documents. Everything from regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure has made IT aware that they need to be ready to archive more data longer. Yet the most common refrain heard is: "I know I need to do something, just someone tell me what I specifically have to do." How do you cut through the fog, and develop specific technical requirements for saving, managing and deleting data in an archival system? Despite confusion, archiving of data can actually be broken down into fundamental requirements.
Requirement 1: Need To Save All Types Of Data
The most common question asked: What electronic documents and data need to be saved? Only "official records," or documents, files, e-mail, instant messages? The answer to all of these is at various times: yes. Both regulators and especially the courts are expecting organizations to produce (hence have preserved or saved) a wide range of documents. All types of "electronically stored information" (commonly abbreviated ESI) are discoverable. It is important to note that from a regulatory or legal perspective, there is little discrimination of a document based on its medium.
These business and legal drivers create some clear archival requirements IT can follow:
Archiving systems need to be flexible and capable to handle many types of document media - Storage systems used for archiving need to be capable of handling a variety of electronic documents media, including e-mail, instant messages, files, etc
Archiving systems need to be capable of capturing both "official" records as well as "unofficial" documents - Archiving systems need the flexibility to handle input not only from official record and document retention systems, but also electronically stored information from a number of other systems."