Re: [SAGE] Mailbox retention settings

[Richard Chycoski <rskiadmin@chycoski.com>]

Neil Watson wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 03:27:42PM -0600, Brad Knowles wrote:
>> There's a lot of background here that we don't have.  For example, 
>> are you impacted by SarbOx regulations?  Are you a financial services 
>> industry which is required to keep a copy of all communications 
>> (including e-mail and IMs) to and from customers for seven years? Are 
>> there other regulations that might be applicable (e.g., the UK RIP 
>> laws)?
>
> This law grates on me.  It seems to me that corporations pay little more
> than lip service to the SOX data retention rules.  I see them squirrel
> away tapes and other electronic media.  However, I've not witnessed any
> of them plan how they will access this data 7 years later when the
> hardware or software required to read the data is no longer available or
> the media has deteriorated because no one transferred the date to new
> media for preservation. 
Most magnetic media stored even reasonably carefully (i.e., not in the 
back of your car) will last more than seven years and if the typical 
sets of backups are done much of the mail will be duplicated on multiple 
backup generations, aiding in recovery.

And as to finding hardware - you can find some really ancient tape 
drives at places like Weird Stuff (or someone's basement) to restore the 
old tapes - and there are also media conversion companies that will 
provide this service for older tape formats.

There's a "million dollar nine track tape drive" in one of our data 
centres that was used to restore some *very* old, but valuable, data 
(hence the name :-).

And if the government really wants to see your data, they'll find a way 
(via one of their three-letter-orgs?) to restore it. (:-)

- Richard