Legal Hold Archive
Ediscovery involves the retrieval, review, and creation of electronic documents during the investigation phase of a dispute. These documents can include all types of electronically stored information (commonly referred to as ESIs). However, email data is almost always at the center of eDiscovery`s business. To be eDiscovery-ready, organizations must capture, collect, and retain electronically stored information for use as evidence in litigation, audit, or investigation. Today, this has a huge impact on the outcome of court cases – an estimated 85% of organizations in the United States are currently involved in some type of litigation, and electronically stored information accounts for 90% of all information collected for legal disclosures. In addition to legal custody and compliance solutions, Mimecast provides compliance solutions for government, finance, and healthcare. If your organization requires that all mailbox items be retained for a specific period of time, such as 7 years, you can create a time-based retention area so that items in the archive are retained for a specific period of time. For example, consider a mailbox that is placed on permanent hold based on time and has a retention period of 365 days. If an item in this mailbox is deleted 300 days after the date it is received, it will be retained for an additional 65 days before it is permanently deleted. You can use a time-based compliance store in conjunction with a retention policy to ensure that items are retained for the specified amount of time and permanently deleted after that period. What happens if mail forwarding is configured for a mailbox and messages are not copied to the original mailbox when the mailbox is pending? Mailbox blocking settings are checked during the delivery process.
If the message meets the mailbox`s retention criteria, a copy of the message is stored in the Recoverable Items folder. This means that you can use eDiscovery tools to search the original mailbox for messages forwarded to another mailbox. Versions – If a user has enabled In-Place Hold or Litigation Retention, mailbox items must be protected from tampering or modification by the user or process. This is achieved through a copy-on-write process. When a user or process changes certain properties of a mailbox item, a copy of the original item is stored in the Versions folder before the change is committed. The process is repeated for subsequent changes. Items captured in the Versions folder are also indexed and returned during eDiscovery searches. Once they are no longer retained, copies of the Versions folder are deleted by the managed folder wizard.
Applying legal retention to certain mailboxes protects email and social media data from user change and ensures that data in mailboxes is not (forced or automatic) deleted from the archive. When a mailbox is placed on litigation hold, items in the Cleanups subfolder are retained for the retention period specified by the Litigation Hold. The retention period is calculated from the date an item was originally received or created and defines how long items are kept in the Purges subfolder. When the retention period for an item in the Cleanups subfolder expires, the item is marked for permanent deletion and deleted from Exchange the next time MFA processes the mailbox. If a mailbox is locked indefinitely, items are never deleted from the Deletes subfolder. You can also run the following command to verify that the mailbox has been placed on litigation hold: Unlimited archive: The indefinite retention scenario is similar to litigation hold. It is used to preserve mailbox items so that you can meet eDiscovery requirements. During the litigation or investigation period, items are never deleted. The duration is not known in advance, so no end date is configured. To keep all email items indefinitely, do not specify query or duration parameters when creating a compliance store. Mimecast Cloud Archive provides a single online repository that consolidates live and archived emails, enabling rapid decision-making in early case assessment processes.
Mimecast enables administrators to centrally manage all Office 365 retention periods from a web-based console with the ability to perform near real-time eDiscovery searches for litigation, SEC 17a 4 compliance, and other legal and compliance requirements. Here`s what happens when you create a litigation hold. Every Office 365 Legal Hold solution should be able to minimize the administrative burden of managing email retention, retrieving critical email, and protecting relevant metadata. When integrated tools for Office 365 Legal Hold aren`t enough to simplify Office 365 eDiscovery and ensure litigation readiness, Mimecast Cloud Archive provides a powerful yet easy-to-use solution that can extend the capabilities of Office 365. E-mail archiving reduces storage space for the primary mailbox. However, there are also restrictions on the archive mailbox. Click here to learn more. Enable archive mailbox and enable self-expanding archiving – You can enable unlimited storage capacity for the Recoverable Items folder by simply enabling the archive mailbox and then enabling the self-expanding archive feature in Exchange Online. This translates to 110 GB for the Recoverable Items folder in the primary mailbox and unlimited storage capacity for the Recoverable Items folder in the user`s archive. How to: Enable archive mailboxes in the Compliance Portal and enable unlimited archiving – Administrator Help. Mimecast provides a cloud-based email archiving, continuity, and security service that seamlessly integrates with the Microsoft platform to provide administrators with the best tools to manage Office 365 security compliance, archiving, backup, and Office 365 Legal Hold. On the properties flyout page, click the Email tab, and then under More Actions, click Manage Litigation Retention.
When a store associated with an eDiscovery case is placed on a mailbox, the deleted items are moved from the Deletes subfolder to the DiscoveryHolds subfolder and retained until the mailbox is released from the eDiscovery store.