Governance, including the ECT Act, Sox, Hippa and Basel, is the question on most South African IT industry minds at the moment. African Independent took the decision to implement the compliant mail archiving solution from Google - Postini, implemented by DOT IT (www.dotit.co.za).
“We have found the system to be robust and it has given us the missing piece of the puzzle in accordance with our mail infrastructure, concise reporting, compliance and in-depth investigation tools,” says George McKay, Group Exec Manager Information Technology.
The solution has been in full force since 31 January 2009 and no sooner than 27 March 2008, Postini had its chance to prove is e-discovery process on all archived mail.
The situation that African Independent found itself in was one of a solicitations and data-leak nature. The problem was that you would have to search every single mailbox over an unknown period for both text and content, received from address as well as sent to address. This type of investigation would normally take months of dedicated investigation for an organisation of this size.
African Independent easily and quickly completed the investigation using the Postini Parameter-based search using parameters such as date range, sender, recipient, subject, text and content across multiple users.
The investigation was in-depth and concise, which proved to be invaluable as action was taken within 24 hours of the completion of the investigation. The entire process, from start to finish, took under a week.
Discovery is the process of identifying, preserving, collecting, reviewing, analysing and producing information during civil legal actions. The goal of discovery is to obtain information that will be useful in developing relevant information for pre-trial motions and for the trial itself. Information sought during discovery can include documents, testimony and other information deemed necessary by a court.
E-discovery is simply the extension of the discovery process to information that is stored electronically and includes e-mail, instant messages, word processing files, spreadsheets and other electronic content that may be stored on desktops, laptops, file servers, mainframes, smartphones, employees' home computers or on a variety of other platforms.
Google Message Discovery also included a complete set of e-mail security features, so they could provide the highest levels of security for their e-mail systems - without installing expensive hardware or software. This allowed AI to block spam, viruses, and other external threats before they reached the organisation and ensure proprietary information remained confidential while staying within the organisation. African Independent could also define which e-mails - within and beyond the network - are encrypted, providing an additional layer of security. Plus, because these security features are built into Google Message Discovery, it can manage all the messaging-related policies from a single, central console.
African Independent has now also implemented a proactive approach using text-based content scanning on all mails inbound and outbound, which gives it the ability to set basic dispositions of block, delete, quarantine, quarantine redirect or blind copy redirect.
Google Message Discovery, powered by Postini, is a secure, hosted e-mail service that solves this problem for enterprises looking to cost-effectively protect and access archived e-mail data. Google Message Delivery enables you to:
* Create a centralised and searchable e-mail repository for your organisation.
* Quickly search across the archive to collect e-mail for legal discovery.
* Secure your e-mail from spam, viruses and other threats.
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