The Value of Compliance

This paper defines the cost advantages of the Reference Information Storage System (RISS) when applied to email systems in general and when applied to specific functions such as electronic evidence discovery (EED) or regulatory compliance.

HP's Reference Information Storage System (RISS) provides an all-in-one tamperproof, fully content-indexed archive to help customers meet their compliance needs. The summary of value statements for RISS includes:
- Significant cost and time savings for searches
- Ease of deployment to get to compliance
- Cost savings from a stabilized email system, including server consolidation
- Avoidance of fines

HP's Reference Information Storage System (RISS) is an active archiving platform that transforms unstructured data into exploitable information that can be retrieved in seconds. Reference Information Manager (RIM) for Messaging is an email archiving application that reduces the cost of email storage and helps address compliance needs. RIM for Messaging is specifically designed as an application connector to the HP Reference Information Storage System (RISS).

RISS is an easily deployed and managed archive appliance that offloads data from corporate email servers, thereby improving performance of the email infrastructure and reducing the need for additional email servers.

RISS also provides web-based and email client advanced search capabilities that support nearly instantaneous searches of even very large amounts of archived data, giving customers the ability to respond quickly to government requests for document retrieval as well as supporting corporate litigation discovery activities. Archived data is time-stamped and secured against tampering. Archived data is retained based upon administrative policies and then electronically shredded at the end of the retention period.

The key value of RISS in EED is automating what can be a costly and time-consuming discovery process and the avoidance of fines by retaining relevant information in a tamperproof way that is easy to retrieve when it is needed. RISS also provides a means for destruction of documents according to a planned and documented process of document management, yet allows for requested documents to be protected in a quarantine repository for the duration of a litigation hold without fear that they will be prematurely destroyed regardless of the initial retention policy on those documents prior to quarantine.

Value #1: Improved Searching Methods
Without RISS, the ability to search for email messages mentioning specific phrases or keywords is a laborious, sequential, manual process. In Microsoft Exchange, each user's PST file(s) need to be loaded and scanned for the keywords, a process that can literally take months, depending on the number of users. Some users create multiple PST files to avoid file limits placed on them by the Exchange administrators. This tactic can create many PST files per user (sometimes as many as one PST file per month).

The searching and collection of relevant email messages can increase exponentially if the user community and the IT staff save various copies of PST files. (Figure #1). The IT staff may have PST backup procedures, but these procedures are usually based on the need to restore the PST files after a disaster, such as a disk failure or virus. In these cases, the backups are held for usually less than one month. In addition, the number of PST files can be increased substantially by users creating their own PST copies to circumvent email system capacity limits. The number of PSTs can be compounded by proper procedures for PST use not being communicated to the user community, or not decided upon, or both.

With RISS, all of the user's PST files can be placed into one tamper-proof archive that is searchable by designated administrators. The results of the searches can be placed in separate repositories and held for specific uses. The ability to delete and destroy emails after a specified time period is preserved, based on which repository is holding the messages.

Even when retention policies are in place, companies often have only a matter of days to turn over requested documentation for government audits or litigation-related electronic evidence discovery. The RISS/RIM solution eliminates the need for this costly and time-consuming process because it provides full-content indexing of all emails and office documents and advanced search capabilities that return search results in 3-5 seconds no matter how large the store of archived data.