Osterman on Senator Dianne Wilkerson Bribery Case - Archiving Email and Other Content is Critical

Analyst Mike Osterman (of Osterman Research fame) has been doing some really interesting posts over at Messaging Wire. He recently posted a note about developments in the bribery case of Massachusetts state senator Dianne Wilkerson, who was arrested last year for allegedly accepting more than $23,000 in bribes to help a Roxbury, Mass. nightclub obtain a liquor license.

Recent developments in the case make this relevant to those of us who follow email archiving. As Mike explains in his post:

Last week, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's office was ordered by state authorities to secure all computers in city hall after it was discovered that one of the mayor’s aides may have destroyed critical email evidence in the Wilkerson case.  The city has blamed the deletion of email on a “technology glitch”. Other key events in the case thus far:

• The US attorney’s office managing this case has been informed of the deletion of email, but as of this writing has not taken any action.
• The Massachusetts Secretary of State has ordered the city of Boston to engage a computer forensics expert to help recover the deleted emails.
• A Boston newspaper reports that the individual who allegedly deleted the emails is the same individual who might have been instrumental in helping to secure the liquor license for the club in Roxbury.
• Since this controversy began, the city of Boston has spent roughly $1 million on email archiving capabilities.

As Mike goes on to point out, this is a prime example of why all organizations need to archive important content, especially email. When legal actions are pending, parties are required to ensure the preservation of relevant evidence and email archiving systems make it easy not just to save content in the first place, but to put relevant emails under "legal hold" to ensure that they are not tampered with or deleted.

My own research shows that, in the past year, at least 25% of large organizations had at least one legal event where employee email was subpoenaed. And unless such systems are in place, the costs of restoring, discovering and preserving subpoenaed email content can be run into the millions of dollars, even for a single eDiscovery event.

You can read Mike's full post here:  Osterman, "Archiving is Critical"

Mike is also the author of a Proofpoint-sponsored whitepaper, "Email Archiving: Realizing the Cost Savings and Other Benefits from SaaS," which describes more of the best practices around email archiving and how adopting a Software-as-a-Service solution for email archiving often provides the absolute lowest cost of ownership approach to email retention.