Why should email archiving be a part of your cybersecurity strategy?

Email has stood the test of time and continues to be the number one communication tool for businesses of all sizes. With so much important data being exchanged through email, organizations rely heavily on email to conduct their everyday business smoothly. Everything from patented designs, financial transactions, vendor invoices, revenue reports, and other important data is stored in emails, making them the number one threat vector cybercriminals try to penetrate and gain access to.

While most organizations focus on preventing cyber attacks by implementing email security solutions, deploying firewalls, and setting up tools to detect anomalies, they fail to consider an important aspect. Setting up the right incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity plan is equally important. One factor that’s crucial to ensure smooth business operations even in the event of a cyber attack is archiving emails in a secure and easy-to-access manner.

In this article, we'll take you through what email archiving does, why email security is important, and the different ways in which archiving strengthens your organization's cybersecurity.

What is email archiving?

Email archiving is the process of identifying and storing emails in a tamper-proof, secure environment, often in a location different from that of the primary email provider. In email archiving, the emails are indexed and stored to enable easy retrieval of the content, metadata, and any attached documents for business, legal, security, or compliance purposes. While traditional email storage prioritizes immediate access to recent emails, archiving focuses on preserving huge amounts of data for a longer duration. 

This ensures that organizations can rely on an email archiving solution to safeguard their data while always providing access to it, even if all of their security firewalls fail and an intruder gains access and alters their sensitive data. This not only improves an organization's security posture, but also enhances legal-readiness and compliance.

Why is a cybersecurity strategy important?

Most organizations are now familiar with the need to follow secure emailing practices and set up defenses that work towards keeping email threats out. But a report on cyber resilience states that 74% of CEOs are concerned about their organization's ability to reduce damages caused by cyber attacks. This demonstrates that even though organizations are aware of the need for cybersecurity, efficient deployment remains a concern. 

Email archiving is an important aspect to consider while drafting a cybersecurity policy, but it continues to be overlooked by many organizations. If an email threat, such as a ransomware attack, strikes an organization, their best bet to keep business running smoothly is to archive their emails securely. This will ensure that they don't completely lose access to their data, even if the hacker doesn't release their hold on emails. 

Apart from this, there are also cases of intentional or accidental data deletion by an organization's employees. These are called insider threats. If an employee decides to go against the organization with corporate espionage, an archiving solution always keeps the email safe even if it's deleted from the email provider. Similarly, if there are negligent insiders who fail to adhere to security protocols or treat data carelessly, archived emails could come to the rescue. 

The collapse of Enron in the early 2000s is a reminder of how crucial email records can be. Investigators uncovered massive fraud largely through archived emails, which provided immutable evidence that malicious insiders could not alter or erase. Without those records, much of the misconduct might have gone undetected. This highlights why preserving and securing email communication is vital, not just for compliance, but for uncovering wrongdoing.

How does archiving help with cybersecurity?

Archiving helps many organizations reduce the operational overhead that comes with a security breach. We'll explore the different ways in which you can achieve this with your email archiving solution. 

It ensures data integrity

When cybercriminals gain access to sensitive data, you don’t know what they may do with it. They may tamper with it, alter it, or even delete it in an attempt to extort money from the company. In such cases, if the organization focuses on just prevention of these attempts, they may be stranded from their original data. If they archive their emails using an archiving solution, they’ll have access to their original email data without facing any alterations to it. 

This method of keeping data in a secure location, different from the email provider, makes sure that data integrity is maintained, and that the company will always have access to it, even if their primary storage location is compromised. 

It aids in incident response

Preparing to stop email threats in their tracks is important for all organizations. Equally important is the preparedness to handle the consequences of a security or email breach in case one strikes. Having a strategy to manage the fallout of a data breach is a crucial factor in cyber resilience. To amp up an organization's cyber resilience, email archiving solutions have multiple controls. 

Monitoring emails and tracing the right emails through which a breach occurred is one of the critical controls provided by these solutions. With these forensic controls, analyzing phishing campaigns and threat hunting becomes much simpler.

It defends against email threats

Email threats, such as phishing or malware attacks, could be a huge hassle for organizations to manage. When an organization is hit with such attacks, the employees' account credentials could be stolen, and the users may be locked out of their accounts. In attacks like ransomware, the email account or the entire system may be encrypted, and the user will be denied access. 

If the emails are archived, users can conduct their business through their email archiving solution because they'll always have a copy of their data there. Smooth business operations can be carried on in the interim period until regular access is restored.

It supports compliance

Every organization has to abide by certain regional and industrial laws put forth by regulatory bodies. For example, organizations in the healthcare sector need to follow the HIPAA regulation, which mandates that emails related to patient records need to be stored for at least seven years. If a cybercriminal gains access to a healthcare provider's email account and erases sensitive data, they could risk facing fines due to non-compliance. 

With an archiving solution in place, they can rest assured that a copy of their emails are safely guarded in an archiving solution, even if their email provider faces a cyber attack. They can provide this copy in case they're requested to, in case of audits. 

It ensures legal readiness

The privacy and security consciousness of internet users across the globe has been steadily increasing. If users get word that an organization they have ties with is a victim of a cyberattack, they may start a legal proceeding against the company to get compensation for their data that has been exposed. In certain cases, if a vendor doesn't comply with their SLA due to service outage, clients may go to court. 

To prove that the organization was targeted in a cyber attack and that they've taken the necessary steps to mitigate the effects of the attack, they can use their archived emails as evidence. This may lessen the impact or fines imposed. 

It enhances business continuity

Business continuity refers to the ability of a business to conduct normal operations even when they face a disruption. To ensure they're able to keep up with such scenarios, they should be equipped with the necessary software and tools. Archiving solutions offer the ability to view retained emails, locate specific emails via eDiscovery, and even export them for viewing. 

With these controls, organizations can continue their business operations seamlessly and employ archiving as a crucial factor in their disaster recovery planning. 

It strengthens insider threat detection

Email threats aren’t always propagated from the outside. Sometimes, an organization's employees can be the cause of threats. Malicious insiders could erase email data intentionally or tamper with proof of their wrongdoings. Careless employees who lack the awareness about safe data-handling practices may alter data accidentally. 

With an archiving solution in place, the admins can go through the archived emails to monitor and identify any anomalous behavior and detect insiders who are the cause of the threat. 

Additional benefits of email archiving

Equipping organizations with a robust cybersecurity strategy is one of the core benefits offered by email archiving solutions. However, there are other benefits to archiving emails that aid organizations in many different ways. 

It serves as a single source of truth

Email archiving consolidates communication into one reliable, tamper-proof repository. When questions arise, whether it’s a contract term, a compliance query, or a customer interaction, teams don’t need to sift through scattered inboxes or inconsistent backups. They can turn to a definitive archive that eliminates ambiguity, reduces miscommunication, and improves organizational accountability.

It boosts productivity

Email providers are built to display the most recent email data. If an employee accumulates years’ worth of data in their email provider, there's undue strain on the email server, causing slowness in normal operations such as email searches, loading emails, and others. This causes a drop in employee productivity, which could be avoided with an archiving solution. 

It helps with storage management

Many organizations are mandated to store certain types of emails for a particular number of years, as mandated by their industrial guidelines. To reduce the effects of the issues caused by the email provider due to extensive storage, organizations can choose to move their older emails to the archiving solution, retaining just the newer ones that employees regularly engage with, in their email provider.

It reduces cost

When you purchase a plan with an email provider to keep up with the increasing storage requirements, you also pay for the additional features that come with the plan upgrade. This may not be necessary for all of your employees. But with an archiving solution, you're paying just for the retention costs and the eDiscovery functionalities. This significantly reduces the cost that needs to be borne by the company.

Key features in a secure archiving solution

While picking an email archiving solution for a business, it's important to consider some crucial factors to ensure industry-standard archival practices and security measures. The solution should have certain controls that make administering an organization simple and efficient. 

Custom retention policy: The needs of every company differ. Within a company, multiple departments will have different needs. To keep up with these requirements, the email archiving solution should offer the option to customize retention policies and create any number of other policies. Additionally, the option to filter out and customize the retention rules to pick the right emails for retention should be built into the archiving solution. 

Fast eDiscovery: eDiscovery is a core feature in email archiving solutions. The ability to look up the right emails at the right time is important in many business contexts. The eDiscovery feature in archiving solutions must be fast, reliable, and simple to use. It should have granular controls to fetch the emails in question with advanced search options. The results for the requested conditions should be returned within seconds, while allowing parallel searches for optimal usage.

End-to-end encryption: Organizations place huge trust in an archiving solution. This is the tool they turn to when they've lost access to their email provider. It's vital that all emails are stored securely with top-notch encryption. Emails should be AES 256 encrypted, with end-to-end encryption, ensuring that emails are secured while in transit and at rest. This prevents any unauthorized access to data and ensures that it stays tamper-proof. 

Comprehensive audit trails: In every organization, there needs to be a control to ensure that the admins are correctly monitoring the data, and there's no unwarranted deletion or alteration of the emails. The audit-trail function in an email archiving solution should solve this need. It should keep a track of all the actions performed by the admins, along with the time, date, and the users on whom the actions were performed. This keeps track of all admin activity and ensures that there's no misdemeanor. 

For an extensive guide on the email archiving features to be considered while picking an archiving solution, click here for our article on "10 must-have features in email archiving solutions".

Wrapping up

Email archiving has long been associated with compliance and storage efficiency, but in today’s threat landscape, its role goes far beyond regulatory checkboxes. By ensuring data integrity, supporting forensic investigations, safeguarding against fraud, and providing continuity in the face of attacks, archiving becomes a vital pillar of a modern cybersecurity strategy.

As cybercriminals continue to exploit email as their preferred entry point, and with negligent user behavior remaining a persistent risk, organizations need more than preventive measures to guard their emails. They need visibility, accountability, and resilience. Email archiving solutions offer that through a tamper-proof, easily accessible record that strengthens security posture significantly.

eProtect is a cloud-based email archiving and security solution that provides email archiving for cloud and on-premise email providers. The solution offers secure email archiving, quick eDiscovery, and comprehensive audit trails to ensure that organizations stay compliant and are prepared for all kinds of email threats. eProtect is the archiving solution powering Zoho Mail, a platform trusted by millions of users.