We have been speaking to many companies that run the full spectrum in size and scope, from Fortune 50 companies to SME companies with 20 employees.

It is interesting that in many instances the Legal Department or Legal advisers to these organizations like to hedge the entire archiving discussion around PIN/SMS by taking the position: "If we don't archive the data, we won't have to produce it if we are caught up in a legal action." To be more succinct: "We can't give opposing counsel something we never had."

A senior aide to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had his BlackBerry stolen by Chinese intelligence agents while on a trip to China back in January 2008. According to another unmentioned senior Brit official, the incident had “all the hallmarks of a suspected honeytrap by Chinese intelligence.”

Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove had lost his BlackBerry device more than once.

The knee-jerk reaction: remotely wipe the devices regularly or at least if they go M.I.A.

Kimberly Hefling, an Associated Press Writer wrote the following:
“A Pennsylvania-based lobbyist was charged Tuesday (July 15th, 2008) with destroying evidence related to an FBI investigation into former Rep. Curt Weldon. Prosecutors said in court filings that Cecilia Grimes threw documents in the trash after she received grand jury subpoenas for those documents. FBI agents found the documents in her garbage cans. Authorities said she also threw out her Blackberry at a fast-food restaurant to keep the FBI from retrieving her e-mail. “

Retain is an email archiving solution for Novell GroupWise® that integrates directly within GroupWise. Retain takes advantage of GroupWise SmartPurge functionality, ensuring all email is archived based upon specific criteria set by the administrator. Retain also utilizes the latest Novell SOAP API as its base data collector. Retain can be easily installed and configured to archive all GroupWise email in a matter of minutes and provides extensive and easy to use search tools to achieve full control over your GroupWise archives.

Features
• Enterprise Archiving
• DBMS Support

If you're an in-house legal counsel, compliance officer, records manager or IT manager, you're probably grappling with how to manage e-mail and files that are growing exponentially. New discovery and privacy requirements are forcing you to both know what you have and retrieve it quickly. Building a consensus on what you should do and actually doing it can be difficult.

At this seminar independent expert Mark Diamond will discuss best practices for retaining e-mail and other electronically stored information.
Learn what are the best policies for retaining e-mail and ESI;

Renowned email compliance expert to speak at GWAVACon
Contoural, Inc.'s Mark Diamond will discuss email archiving policy

GWAVA, one of Novell's largest collaboration partners for Novell GroupWise and Novell Teaming + Conferencing, announced today that Mark Diamond, President and CEO, Contoural, Inc., will speak at GWAVACon in San Diego, Calif.

Diamond, one of the industry thought leaders in email archiving, litigation readiness, compliance, data protection and ILM strategies and practices, will examine records retention and email archiving. The session will also focus on the process of developing an effective retention policy to satisfy needs across legal, compliance, IT and other stakeholders.

The webinar was presented by Joe Bertnick, VP of Product Management for GWAVA. Joe demonstrates his passion for computer security, sharing with us all his knowledge on compliance for GroupWise. Joe covers Archiving and other technologies, E-mail Compliance Overview, Developing Effective Security Policies, Building a Compliance Program, and Technical Auditing of e-mail.

Also presented in the Webinar were keys of how GWAVA Retain, Redline and Reload provide an impenetrable compliance suite.

To view the slide deck from compliant with compliance Webinar http://www.gwava.com/newsletter/Webinar8222007.pdf

"WASHINGTON - U.S. companies will need to keep track of all the e-mails, instant messages and other electronic documents generated by their employees thanks to new federal rules that go into effect Friday, legal experts say."

"The rules, approved by the Supreme Court in April, require companies and other entities involved in federal litigation to produce "electronically stored information" as part of the discovery process, when evidence is shared by both sides before a trial."

Read the original source here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061201/ap_on_hi_te/storing_e_mails

These kind of rules aren't new to most IT Professionals, many of whom have been busy of the last few years implementing and testing different solutions to help with Compliance.