In the previous article we have already listed the questions you should ask yourself if you have implemented Office 365 cloud technologies in your company. But that list is far from full. Here are some more issues you may come across if you do not use any third-party for archiving in Office 365.
Does your company need to export archived email in a file format other than .PST?
The default file format for email content in discovery is the PST. But you may face the situation in which a different file format is needed like PDF or CAB (for regulatory requests). The native Office 365 eDiscovery search results are exported only in the PST format, and this may potentially cause one more trouble.
Does your company use any non-Microsoft applications for work?
Office 365 is able to index approximately 58 different file formats. For those companies that use applications that produce a file format that is not included in this list, a discovery or regulatory search for content in an email attachment will not be supported. This is a great risk in discovery and regulatory data response and an employee productivity issue.
Does your company have any data retention requirements?
The regulatory requirements differ for different organizations, the content of the mailbox may need to be kept for different periods of time. Retention requirements can differ from email to email even in the same industry. This means that Office 365 native email archiving tools will force you to keep your emails for the longest period of time or rely on your employees’ settings which is not safe at all.
Has your company been asked to respond to a government agency information request in the last two years?
Just like eDiscovery requests, regulatory information requests can be full of risk and high cost if you cannot search and export required data fast enough. Office365 relies on its native eDiscovery capability which has already been noted for inability to respond to regulatory requests from time to time.
Does your company need to produce audit logs of archiving in Office 365?
As Office365 does not by default defend archived emails from being deleted, the ability to make audit activity reports for any employee mailboxes would be a good feature to show to the auditors. Office 365 has a feature of audit logging that allows its users to track access to the mailbox by outside people, but it does not audit mailbox owner activities.
Just like in the previous article if you have answered “Yes” to at least one of these questions, then you should use third-party applications to perform archiving in Office 365. Upsafe Office 365 back tool would be a good solution for this task. It can help you to archive your Offcie 365 data automatically.