Emails - one of your most valuable assets

Most of you are very dependent on your emails.  These email files include a broad smorgasbord ranging from personal family pictures through to highly confidential business documents.  Email systems are generally reliable, but unfortunately, when they fail they tend to fail catastrophically. In the blink of an eye, many of you have lost all your email messages.  We receive many phone calls from frantic owners pleading with us to "recover my valuable data!"

How do you ensure that your valuable data is protected?

Fortunately you have several alternatives to choose from.  When we take on new clients our first focus is to protect your highly valuable email systems.  This is how we go through our evaluation process.

1. Are you comfortable moving your messages off your computer and onto an online message system like Gmail, GMX mail, or Hotmail?  Each of these systems offer advantages, with the most compelling being an almost inexhaustible ability to store years of email messages on secure Internet servers. If you are comfortable moving to this model of saving data, then any one of these systems would be right for you.
2. Do you already have a well defined filing system that you use for your message inventory?  Many of our clients simply store all their messages in a single folder and then spend a lot of time 'finding the right message'. Others have elaborate filing systems with each message stored in its particular folder.  If you already store your messages in specific folders then you are naturally suited to either Hotmail or GMX mail.  Gmail offers a more elaborate filing system based on labels, which allows you to file a single message into many different categories. If you simply stuff all your messages into a single folder then Gmail will be your savior as you will be able to search through your email messages using the same blindingly quick Google search engine that powers web searches.
3. If you are comfortable moving your emails off your computer and onto an internet based provider, you still have to ensure that your data is securely backed up.  Paradoxically this means that you must now backup your data from your internet based email account to a computer or hard drive that you control. Gmail and GMX mail have easy backup capabilities, Hotmail requires a paid account.
4. If you have deep rooted confidentiality concerns, like many of our lawyer clients, then we create a robust email backup system as you will not be able to move to online systems. Our preferred approach is to use a Network Address Server and set up the server so that it performs routine backups.  These backups are stored on servers with redundant hard drives, so in the event of a hard drive failure your data is still safe. A low cost approach is to backup your email inventory to a portable hard drive that attaches to your computer through a USB port.

In Conclusion, securing your email is straightforward and must be an essential component of data strategy.