Many organizations use email to communicate with clients. Thus, it’s extremely important for them to keep email data records. But what is the difference between backup vs archiving, and which email storage method is better?
Although often used interchangeably, email backup and email archiving are not the same. Keep reading to discover how the presented email solutions distinguish and what benefits they provide to organizations that need them.
Backup vs Archiving
Many wonder if there is any difference between backup vs archiving because they seem very similar. Email backup and email archiving solutions offer certain contrasting features for storing digital records.
In short, email backup creates a copy of an email database. This way, it’s ready for immediate information recovery. An email archive captures the email data and organizes it in a database that keeps it stored and allows it to be easily retrieved.
Email Backup
Email backup involves storing copies of emails for emergency recovery, serving as a safety net against data loss due to accidental deletion, cyberattacks, or system failures.
While email backup captures a snapshot of the database, it might not always index emails comprehensively. Some backup solutions may offer indexing for faster retrieval, but it’s not a universal feature across all backup systems.
It provides a snapshot of the email database at a specific point in time, allowing for rapid data recovery. This enables businesses to resume operations quickly in case of an incident affecting email data.
Email Archiving
Email archiving focuses on saving email communications for extended periods while indexing them for easier search and retrieval. It serves various purposes, including long-term data governance, meeting legal and compliance requirements, and facilitating employee supervision.
Properly archived emails are typically accessible indefinitely until authorized personnel decide to delete them, aligning with retention policies set by organizations or compliance standards.
Archiving often involves data compression or storage optimization techniques, enabling archived data to take up less space compared to keeping all emails in live mailboxes. This can improve data management and accessibility for employees.
Difference Between Backup and Archiving
Distinguishing between backup vs archiving email solutions is difficult without learning their key differences. Thus, we will carefully go through the following characteristics of each strategy to find out how their usage and purpose vary.
Automatic features
Email archiving captures every email automatically that is sent or received within an organization. This copies all data immediately after it’s been sent or received and stores it permanently in a database.
However, an email backup lacks such automatic features. This requires some time before storing all important data, and there may be significant gaps in the process of creating backup files. With this strategy, organizations risk the possibility of their emails being deleted before they are stored.
Software management
Email archiving can also manage the email system production to store everything in place and improve the performance of the email software., especially for the employees working in IT departments within organizations.
Email archiving strategies are also considered more helpful, long-term data preservers than backups. This is because email backup is a short-term data-saving solution and may require employees to make new backups occasionally.
Search features
Organization representatives are accountable for sending every email. In cases of internal investigations or compliance requests, email archiving is a useful strategy that keeps a proven record of all emails.
It can offer a broad range of searches by indexing every email and pinpointing responsive emails quickly and efficiently for the purpose of investigation. In contrast, email backups cannot perform such complex searches.
Access features
Stored email data shouldn’t be accessible to all employees within an organization. Instead, only the HR, IT, and legal teams should be allowed to access email archives and retrieve important information when needed.
In comparison, email backups lack such access features. Therefore, the search capabilities may not be limited to different kinds of users with this tool. Emails are often seen as sensitive content and shouldn’t be accessible to unauthorized users.
Advantages of Email Backup vs Archiving
Archiving is considered a more beneficial option over backup. However, we must delve into each strategy’s benefits. This is to see in which circumstances each approach should be used before deciding whether backup vs archiving is better for email storage.
Long-term retention
Wondering what is the purpose of archiving emails within an organization? It is mainly used to retain email data in a complete form and store it permanently in a database, making the information available whenever required.
Email archiving achieves full data retention by storing information directly upon their arrival. It also ensures the retained data is encrypted with restricted access to provide security and easier server management for organizations.
Long-term retention is more difficult with email backups. These storage strategies save the server immediately upon email arrival. Yet, due to their unlimited access, users might delete the emails before they are backed up, resulting in a major data loss that is impossible to retrieve.
User error protection
Email archiving can safeguard data against accidental loss by allowing it to be quickly restored, unlike email backups. If an email isn’t properly stored in an archive, users may waste a lot of time tracking it down and trying to retrieve the lost data. They may even face permanent loss of important information, damaging the integrity of their organization.
Archiving solutions for email communication offer convenience and speed. They allow authorized organization administrators to locate and quickly restore important files without much hassle and stress.
Regulatory compliance features
Emails can often be taken as subject to compliance requirements depending on the type of work an organization focuses on. They also vary depending on the industry, like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), which is tailored to US healthcare.
Luckily, email archiving can help meet compliance requirements by offering a tamper-proof manner of data storage. This strategy might also provide more efficient eDiscovery processes and reduce storage requirements.
Can You Combine Backup and Archiving Email Management?
After examining the distinct purposes of email backup vs archiving, we can conclude that they complement each other in certain ways. By combining these two solutions, organizations may achieve comprehensive email management.
Implementing both strategies may lead to better data preservation, compliance, and information recovery. Also, archiving and backup may help organizations meet legal requirements and prioritize cybersecurity.
Conclusion
Learning the differences between backup vs archiving email strategies is crucial to avoid confusion. Although they may serve a similar purpose, their features and advantages make them unique.
Professional organizations find email archiving better. This is because it involves storing email data in a structured database for easier access to needed information and higher levels of searchability and organization.
