Delete and archive for system’s sake and liability

By Jaime Leick, Moving Type

Databases are like household junk drawers: They accumulate far more than you ever expected, and a lot of that stuff is really unnecessary.

Businesses today generate massive quantities of information. According to a 2005 report from the Defense Research Institute, more than 70 percent of commercial data and files are stored in electronic format and more than 80 percent of corporate communications are sent via email.

Often, this data remains in databases, e-mail systems and other applications even after it is no longer useful. Keeping all this data on your active systems is not sustainable. It slows down applications, requires increasingly expensive service agreements, and sucks up valuable power resources.

Cost-conscious companies are looking to pare down their information and archive little used content. But deciding when and how to archive can be a complicated task. Here are some guidelines:

Check industry regulations. Simply deleting data outright is not an option for many organizations. State and federal regulations mandate how long a business must keep certain documents—particularly in the financial and health services sectors.

Be aware of e-discovery laws. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) establish that all corporate records are discoverable in a court case and businesses are subject to hefty fines if they fail to produce relevant records. In 2006, the FRCP was amended to include electronic records. In other words, no shedding paper and no deleting e-mails if legal action is likely.

Dave Fenlon, an attorney with Hager, Dewick & Zuengler in Green Bay, said that electronic file requests are becoming matter of course these days. “They’re coming up more and more in every type of litigation,” he said. “It’s becoming a standard discovery.”

Therein lies another motive for companies to trim their data storage. If you are sued and relevant information resides on your systems, you are obligated to produce it.

The problem is that unless you have a sophisticated archiving system, locating those files and sorting the relevant from the irrelevant can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

To get around these requirements, many companies are implementing standard removal procedures, systematically deleting e-mails, for example, every six months.

As Fenlon explains, there is a limited safe harbor in the rules which allows that information may not be available if it was lost or destroyed as part of a ‘routine, good faith operation of a computer system.’

In other words, if you routinely delete old information to keep your applications running smoothly, then you are litigation-ready and protected from sanctions. Note that information must be deleted consistently in accordance with written policy. And once you have been notified of a legal action, all relevant documents must be saved from that point forward—even if they would otherwise be subject to removal according to your policies.

Establish a data retention policy. “The bottom line is that companies should have in place a policy for governing how electronic data is stored within the company and at what time or how it should be destroyed,” Fenlon said.

Get your corporate counsel and your IT team around the same table as you decide what information to save and the best way to do it.

Thomas Ezdon is compliance director at Locknet, a La Crosse-based information technology firm that specializes in regulated industries, “First,” he said, “determine how long you need to keep a record and how often you might need to access it. Answering those questions will help define which storage method is most appropriate.”

If it’s an item you’ll likely never need again, you can store it on a tape backup. However, data that must be retrieved on demand requires sophisticated archival systems.

“You have to step back and really develop a strategy,” Ezdon said. “That strategy must take into account your organization, the information stored, the requirements, and the retention period.”

Tape backups, for example, are inexpensive, but data recovery is slow and less reliable. If data is critical or will be accessed regularly, then using a CD or disk-to-disk archiving system will provide faster, more reliable results.

Archiving e-mail is a whole other challenge. “Because of the sophistication necessary for e-mail and the unique challenges, it’s usually segregated in a separate retention system,” Ezdon said.

Audit your organization for compliance. Finally, establish procedures to be sure the retention policy is actually being followed. Hording information meant for deletion opens your organization to legal liability and defeats the IT systems benefits of archive management.

Copyrighted material. Used with permission. Article first appeared in the June 1 edition of The Business News.