Cloud-based email archiving is a cost-effective solution for storing important emails in secure and off-site storage.
Unlike on-premise storage solutions, archiving old important emails on a cloud platform gives you 24/7 access to your historical data remotely.
As a centralized storage solution for all your employees and business users, cloud-based email archiving is easy to manage and scale as the volume of your business data increases.
Considering its wide array of benefits, over 90% of companies use some sort of cloud-based services, including cloud-based email archiving.
What is Cloud-Based Email Archiving?
Cloud-based email archiving refers to the process of archiving your emails on a cloud-hosted server such as iCloud, Google Vault, Microsoft Exchange Online Archiving, and so on.
As a remote storage facility for online mail and digital data, cloud email archiving hosting comes with several benefits for modern businesses.
Some of the common features across major cloud email archiving providers for businesses include automation, legal and regulatory compliance, remote access, and scalability.
Before we get into that, let’s quickly delve into how it works:
Step 1: Emails are copied in real time.
Step 2: Emails are securely transmitted to the Cloud.
Step 3: Emails are encrypted and stored in a read-only format, which cannot be deleted or altered.
Step 4: Indexing is done for easy search and retrieval.
Step 5: Customization for enforcing company-specific data retention policies.
Step 6: Access and retrieval of archived emails on the Cloud anytime/anywhere.
Benefits of Cloud-Based Email Archiving
- Centralized remote storage/archival
Cloud email archiving hosting provides a centralized server to archive your old and important emails to be accessed remotely and securely at a later time or whenever you want.
While storing your historical email data, a good cloud email archiving service will also ensure proper archiving and indexing of your data for easy access and retrieval as time demands.
Plus, they come with built-in tools and custom commands to further make the search easy in terms of legal and financial affairs.
- Lack of on-site storage needed
Since you’d be storing/archiving your emails on a cloud service, you won’t be investing significantly in an on-site storage solution either.
With a lower load on your main business server, you can better manage your crucial data at hand without cluttering your systems and virtual space.
Besides, unlike on-site storage solutions, cloud-based email archiving gives you 24/7 access on the go.
- Scalable storage
A seamless scalability is yet another major benefit of cloud-based email archiving hosting, as it can be easily upgraded and migrated to meet your business demands.
That’s right! As compared to on-site or fixed-capacity archiving solutions, cloud-based email archiving lets you scale without making any significant changes in your existing systems.
Thus, it helps you save both time and money to accommodate the growing volume of your business email data.
- Cost-effective
As you can see, cost efficiency is at the heart of it!
Whether through off-site storage or seamless scalability, cloud-based email archiving can reduce the entire cost of infrastructure, including the software and hardware required to store and organize your business emails.
From the moment they capture your email to transmit it to the archive location, cloud-based archiving ensures that all your email copies are properly encrypted and secured to prevent any tampering.
Many email archiving hosts also provide the WORM (Write once, read many) feature to prevent any alteration or deletion of the archived emails whatsoever.
To further avoid any unauthorized access, cloud-based email archiving also comes with proper authentication processes for users to access the archived emails remotely.
- Easy access and retrieval
Speaking of which, authorized users can only access and retrieve the read-only archives on the Internet via the cloud interface or the company’s email provider.
Each archived email is indexed and stored on the basis of the content, attachments, and metadata, such as the date or sender, to enable fast retrieval even across large chunks of email data.
You can even set rules as to which emails you want to delete after a while and which ones you want to keep forever. Based on this, the system will automatically manage your archived emails.
- Legal and regulatory compliance
Cloud-based email archiving can also be useful for complying with legal and industry-specific data guidelines.
For starters, they are easy to locate and retrieve, as archived emails can be searched using a variety of keywords, whether for audits, legal inquiries, or financial investigations.
Being saved in the original format can help businesses gain an upper hand in times of disasters and accidents as far as recovering the email archives is concerned.
- Data loss/theft prevention
Cloud email archiving offers robust security features, including encryption and access controls, to mitigate the risks of data theft.
Plus, it offers plenty of customization to enhance the security of your historical data as you deem fit.
For instance, machine learning for email classification and alerts or reporting for suspicious activity or content.
- E-discovery for audits and investigations.
Cloud-based email archiving hosting facilitates a seamless e-discovery process for searching and retrieving your old crucial emails for legal and financial audits.
Built to support all kinds of audits, such as legal, financial, and internal investigations, these e-discovery tools are a must-have for your legal advisors.
Recap
Cloud-based email archiving is an affordable and secure method of storing important business emails in a cloud platform.
As a remote storage location, cloud email archiving provides many advantages over on-site archiving solutions, as they can be accessed round-the-clock from anywhere.
Unlike on-site and fixed storage spaces, cloud storage can be easily scaled up without making a lot of changes in your existing business infrastructure.
With ample customization and automation features, businesses that use cloud-based email archiving stand in a far better position to manage and produce their historical email data whenever needed.