How ZixArchive Makes Regulatory Compliance Accessible and Advantageous

Archiving just makes sense for today’s businesses. Regulations affecting many sectors mandate that all or most communications be saved for prescribed periods. Putting all that information into an archive ensures that it’s always available when the need arises, no matter the industry you’re in.

In order for archiving to be effective, it must also be comprehensive. Therein lies the challenge. An archive is composed of emails but also text messages, social media posts, website data, and more. All of these make up a company’s “digital footprint,” which increasingly has regulatory, legal, and strategic implications. Identifying what communication channels to feed into the archive is the first hurdle for companies to clear.

The second is integrating all those channels into one central repository. Consolidation must be automated in order to be practical, and it must be consistent in order to be valuable. Just a few missing messages can create an issue with compliance or litigation and compromise the entire effort.

A Company Without Archiving Is Archaic

Archiving is too big an asset to ignore, but it’s also a major undertaking to effectively manage. It’s tempting to conclude that archiving will always be either overwhelming or ineffective. What is essential to realize, however, is that relying on an archive is always better than the alternative.

If regulated business communications have not already been archived, that forces a company to sift through different systems — emails, texts, posts, etc. — to find relevant information. That takes a huge amount of time and resources and inevitably leads to errors and omissions.

A similar scenario involves the eDiscovery process. When a company is required to turn over digital business communications as part of legal proceedings, it’s important to supply exactly what is required and nothing more. Collecting the necessary information and removing everything else is, again, a labor-intensive process. To comply with the court’s timeline, companies often turn to expensive lawyers to sort through the communications and handle the disclosure.

These problems are easily resolved with an archiving solution that includes robust eDiscovery capabilities. The key is for companies to find a solution that can archive all business communication while making eDiscovery easy. 

Taking a Unified Approach

Until recently, Zix specialized in email archiving and protection. Our April 2018 acquisition of Erado, however, has expanded our cloud-based archiving capabilities beyond email to all forms of digital communications.

Because it’s a cloud-based service, ZixArchive with Erado gives companies the scale to archive as much of their business communication as they want for as long as they need. The cloud architecture is also highly secure so that sensitive communications are not exposed to unauthorized users or hackers. Plus, a cloud solution can be quickly deployed so that archives are up and running in minimal time.

Thanks to a policy-based approach, administrators can archive communications from certain senders and recipients or specific groups. ZixArchive supports more than 50 content channels including emails, instant messages, social media, web, text, audio, video, and much more. The administrator defines what gets archived and then collection proceeds automatically. This level of refinement is particularly helpful for companies in the healthcare or finance sectors with strict regulatory obligations.

Meeting those obligations is the final component of Zix’s unified approach. When it’s necessary to produce specific communications or archive audits, they are almost immediately available. Careful indexing makes the eDiscovery process as easy as a Google search, and automated reporting tools save time and money on regulatory audits while meeting every demand.

ZixArchive ensures that business communications remain an asset rather than a liability. Collecting, storing, and securing those communications is as seamless as it is certain. Complying with the demands of attorneys and auditors becomes less risky and less labor-intensive. With comprehensive solutions in place, executives can rest assured that their business is on the safe side of ever-changing regulations and requirements.

Zix has that solution. Contact us today.