E-mail Archiving Appliance Cuts Cost and Time to Retrieve E-mails for Legal Discovery

Automated, drop-in e-mail archiving solution is easy-to-use, low-cost forensic tool

St. Paul, Minn. (PRWEB) September 19, 2005 -- Intradyn (www.intradyn.com), the leader in simple, affordable solutions for automated email compliance, has introduced the next version in a line of email archiving appliances it first began marketing in June 2004. The new-generation product, dubbed "ComplianceVault06," features improved ease-of-use and sets up in as little as ten minutes. Enhancements incorporated into the product are a direct result of customer input.

The ComplianceVault06 allows for rapid searching of email to improve responsiveness to litigation discovery requests, often called "e-discovery." Intradyn was the first to introduce a simple, all-in-one appliance solution for email archiving at a cost of less than $10k more than 15 months ago, and this new version takes another major step forward in simplicity and functionality. The ComplianceVault06 Email Archiving & Retrieval Appliance is an integrated hardware/software solution that captures all of a company's email on a continuous basis, from a virtually unlimited number of email boxes. It stores the email on hard disk and, optionally, on tape – including unalterable "WORM" (write once, read many) tape media, if desired. The appliance works with Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, and virtually any IMAP or POP3 email systems. In addition to its use in legal discovery, it also allows companies to meet a variety of email retention needs, whether related to regulatory compliance (SEC 17a-3 and 17a-4, NASD 3110, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA, etc), or simply for good business practice in electronic records management – as relates the requirements of the Sarbanes Oxley Act, for example.

New Capabilities and Benefits
The main features of the new ComplianceVault06 email archiving appliance are as follows:

• All-new user interface – greatly facilitating ease-of-use, featuring simpler navigation, cleaner design, and drop-down menus, for example. (See http://www.intradyn.com/compliancevault06/newinterface.jpg.)

• Fast, extensive search capabilities - Greatly expanded and advanced search features, including wildcard searches, fuzzy searches, proximity searches, range searches, boosting relevance levels, grouping for sub-queries, field grouping, and – most importantly – the ability to save searches. The new software can search by date or range of dates, the "To" field, the "From" field, and can search key words in email subject lines, message bodies, and/or attachments. Any combination of these search criteria can be selected. Search results tell you the location of emails – that is, where they are physically located, on what storage.

• Exporting of search results – the ability to easily export any email search results, directly from the search results screen, to a file, to a CD, to an email, or to a printed hardcopy, for example. The search is saved in .eml file format. This feature greatly facilitates use of the system for response to SEC auditors, for legal discovery, or for review by a company's legal counsel. Results can easily be imported into the next step in the legal process, such as a litigation support system.

• More audit features – expanding on features already available, to make for even better audit reporting and control. Every single access to the system is tracked, by date, time, and user providing a full audit log.

Also available with all ComplianceVault06 models is the option of selecting tape encryption, to safeguard stored and transported tapes. Intradyn's Encryptape technology is based on the same type of encryption used by the U.S. federal government, the highest level available, which is AES 256-bit – called "strong encryption."

The ComplianceVault06 is a true appliance, meaning it is a complete, application-specific, plug-and-play network server with a web interface. As such, it is an all-in-one, in-house solution with a single upfront cost -- as differentiated from outsourced, service-provider solutions, which have ongoing costs and risks related to data security and liability.

Meeting Customer Needs
"Email has replaced the telephone as the leading business communication tool," said Gary Doan, Intradyn's CEO. "We developed the original ComplianceVault to help brokerage firms comply with the SEC's strict email retention and retrieval regulations, but we discovered that a large number of our customers were not purchasing the appliance to meet these specific regulations. They were smaller public and private companies, trade organizations, municipal governments, and others. We received requests for additional features to make legal discovery easier, and for encryption of tapes, for secure storage and transportation. These customers also wanted to save search sets to run at regular intervals, and to have additional audit and export functions."

Doan continued: "Traditional email backups are typically not searchable, and do not prevent tampering or provide a forensic audit trail. Email archiving with the ability to search the entire email and attachments, and retrieve, with the ability to export the findings with minimal effort, is something virtually every company now needs."

Starting at less than $10,000, the new ComplianceVault06 appliance has a much lower total cost than other solutions, whether in-house or outsourced. It is a simple, all-in-one, drop-in solution – essentially "email archiving in a box" – requiring no integration, and not affecting a company's existing IT infrastructure. It can be installed and set up quickly, even by non-IT personnel. There are no additional per-user costs, license costs, or other ongoing costs (other than tape media). Unlimited technical support is provided by Intradyn at no additional charge.

Analyst Comments
"People don't search and retrieve out of archives that often, but because of the litigious risk associated with saving e-mails for an extensive period of time, that may require a search and retrieval based on a discovery notice," said Brian Babineau, an analyst with Enterprise Strategy Group, of Milford, Mass. "You need to be able to search based on the requirements outlined in the discovery notification and then export the emails for further review, culling, and evidence preparation by external counsel."

Babineau continued: "The more extensive audit capabilities you have, the easier it is to find what you're looking for, but it also supports many regulation requirements that require you to have an audit trail of who tried to access specific messages or what actions they tried to take. So, the bigger and better audit trail you can build, the better you can support the regulators and knock off a few litigation support requirements on the chain of custody side."

There are many other e-mail archiving solutions on the market, Babineau noted, but "none has both the price point and a combination of hardware and software in one appliance like the ComplianceVault06."

"It's all in one, so you get the software and the non-erasable and rewritable storage in one appliance, as opposed to having to buy the products and storage from separate vendors," he said.

Other Product Enhancements
Additional new features incorporated into the ComplianceVault06 appliance include, but are not limited to:

• Multiple mail server support
• Ability to write to tape on demand
• Both individual and group user account privileges (21 permission functions can be selected for each user or group)
• New archive scheduling features
• Improved tape cataloging

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