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Survey: More Than 60% of U.S. Small Businesses in Danger of Losing Critical Emails

on March 23, 2011
Survey: More Than 60% of U.S. Small Businesses in Danger of Losing Critical Emails
62.4% of SMEs do not currently use a mail archiving solution – opening the door to a host of issues including: limited email backup and restore, which could lead to data loss; an inability to search for pertinent messages in the event of an audit or eDiscovery request – which could result in costly compliance violations or legal suits; strain on Exchange servers; and storage problems.
These were the results of an independent survey conducted by Opinion Matters, and commissioned by GFI Software, in which more than 200 U.S.-based IT decision makers participated.
The survey also revealed that greater than 38% of the 202 businesses polled do not have an archiving or backup solution of any kind in place, further exacerbating the chances that a network failure could result in a complete loss of critical data stored in email.
Additional results from the survey:
• Two-thirds (66.8%) of respondents were unfamiliar with U.S. regulatory compliance standards regarding email archiving. This number ballooned to over 90% in businesses that rely on only one IT professional.
• 37% said they are required to search for old or deleted emails on a monthly basis, if not more frequently, because of requests from end users, the need to meet compliance requirements, the need to provide copies of correspondence for a lawsuit or audit, or any other requirements.
• 31% of respondents said they would consider a hosted approach to email archiving.
Implementation of a mail archiving solution can enable several email-related necessities, including maintaining an archive of all corporate email correspondence, meeting the growing number of regulations for compliance, eDiscovery and other legislation, significantly reducing the demands on the Exchange server, and managing and reducing the company’s dependency on PST files.
“Email infrastructure is quickly becoming a complex beast, and IT administrators have more factors to consider than ever before – including an increasing level of compliance standards that many are apparently unaware of,” said Walter Scott, CEO, GFI Software. “As the survey clearly indicates, IT managers are routinely required to search for specific emails, and without the automated search capabilities that a mail archiving solution brings, they can take up valuable IT staff time to locate. Critical data stored in email needs to be easily retrievable and accessible, for both day-to-day business concerns as well as for good compliance. Finally, taking the risk of not backing up or archiving key data stored in email can be a very costly gamble depending on the type of data your business is dealing with.”
GFI Software offers both an on-premise solution and a hosted service for email archiving. GFI MailArchiver 2011 is the latest on-premise email archiving software from GFI and now offers automatic archive management and faster, richer search, which makes it even better positioned to tackle the pain points of ever-growing storage costs and email discovery. The recently introduced GFI MAX MailArchive, a hosted service sold through managed service providers, delivers a compliance and disaster recovery solution that requires no additional software installation and delivers a high level of resilience by providing geographic distribution of the message store.

62.4% of SMEs do not currently use a mail archiving solution – opening the door to a host of issues including: limited email backup and restore, which could lead to data loss; an inability to search for pertinent messages in the event of an audit or eDiscovery request – which could result in costly compliance violations or legal suits; strain on Exchange servers; and storage problems.

These were the results of an independent survey conducted by Opinion Matters, and commissioned by GFI Software, in which more than 200 U.S.-based IT decision makers participated.

The survey also revealed that greater than 38% of the 202 businesses polled do not have an archiving or backup solution of any kind in place, further exacerbating the chances that a network failure could result in a complete loss of critical data stored in email.

Additional results from the survey:

  • Two-thirds (66.8%) of respondents were unfamiliar with U.S. regulatory compliance standards regarding email archiving. This number ballooned to over 90% in businesses that rely on only one IT professional.
  • 37% said they are required to search for old or deleted emails on a monthly basis, if not more frequently, because of requests from end users, the need to meet compliance requirements, the need to provide copies of correspondence for a lawsuit or audit, or any other requirements.
  • 31% of respondents said they would consider a hosted approach to email archiving.

Implementation of a mail archiving solution can enable several email-related necessities, including maintaining an archive of all corporate email correspondence, meeting the growing number of regulations for compliance, eDiscovery and other legislation, significantly reducing the demands on the Exchange server, and managing and reducing the company’s dependency on PST files.

“Email infrastructure is quickly becoming a complex beast, and IT administrators have more factors to consider than ever before – including an increasing level of compliance standards that many are apparently unaware of,” said Walter Scott, CEO, GFI Software. “As the survey clearly indicates, IT managers are routinely required to search for specific emails, and without the automated search capabilities that a mail archiving solution brings, they can take up valuable IT staff time to locate. Critical data stored in email needs to be easily retrievable and accessible, for both day-to-day business concerns as well as for good compliance. Finally, taking the risk of not backing up or archiving key data stored in email can be a very costly gamble depending on the type of data your business is dealing with.”

GFI Software offers both an on-premise solution and a hosted service for email archiving. GFI MailArchiver 2011 is the latest on-premise email archiving software from GFI and now offers automatic archive management and faster, richer search, which makes it even better positioned to tackle the pain points of ever-growing storage costs and email discovery. The recently introduced GFI MAX MailArchive, a hosted service sold through managed service providers, delivers a compliance and disaster recovery solution that requires no additional software installation and delivers a high level of resilience by providing geographic distribution of the message store.

About the Author:

Jesmond is Senior Web Marketer at GFI Software, with a keen interest in social media. He is an avid tech enthusiast who is always up-to-date with the latest tech and mobile operating systems, particularly Android.

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Comments
Wella Jong March 25, 201110:07 am

The result of the survey is not shocking to me. It’s not only SMEs that don’t use a mail archiving solution. Most freelancers and self-employed individuals are also ignorant about email archiving.

For me, it’s not the size of the company or how much your business earns a year that matters. Every venture is in danger of losing critical emails if they dont apply a mail archiving solution.

Tana George March 25, 20112:17 pm

The result of the survey isn’t surprising but it isn’t nice either. It shows gross underestimation of the importance of email archiving. I presume that once a business loses all their emails because of lack of archiving, then they will know how vital email archiving is. Unfortunately, many managers learn better when they learn the hard way. :)

Mary Cochner April 6, 201112:17 pm

Two-thirds (66.8%) of respondents were unfamiliar with U.S. regulatory compliance standards regarding email archiving???!!!

Is it just me or most of the respondents are total email newbies? Archiving is an essential part of the email system. If you use email you ought to archive it for safe keeping, email backup, and disaster recovery.

I agree with Wella Jong – Every venture (whether it’s small, medium, or large company) will be in danger of losing critical emails if they dont archive their emails.