Iron Mountain Offers IM Archiving and Retention Services

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With corporate use of Instant Messaging booming, Iron Mountain has teamed with four solution providers to offer IM records archiving and retention.

Enterprises have begun to realize the importance of managing and controlling Instant Messages as electronic records, reports Iron Mountain. The financial services industry is leading the trend, with Instant Messaging falling under the umbrella of “electronic communications” subject to the archiving and reporting requirements specified under SEC Rule 17a-4.

To help organizations comply with regulations such as SEC Rule 17a-4 and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Iron Mountain has partnered with Akonix Systems, Communicator Inc., FaceTime Communications, and Imlogic to offer an end-to-end Instant Message compliance solution that offers companies the benefit of real-time IM communications without compromising compliance standards.

“The impact of compliance will be felt within large and small organizations across every industry,” says Peter Gerr, research analyst at Enterprise Storage Group. “Instant Messaging, email, and other forms of electronic correspondence are being scrutinized as never before…Iron Mountain is providing a lot of value by offering a choice of secure IM solutions to address the tactical need for compliance with SEC Rule 17a-4, while not losing sight of the importance of managing these records as part of an overall information lifecycle management process.”

“Instant Messaging has emerged as a widely-accepted communications medium for conducting business,” states Peter Delle Donne, president of Iron Mountain’s Enterprise Solutions and Services Division. “For companies to become compliant with regulatory requirements applicable to electronic communications, the challenge is to apply the properties of an email record to an Instant Message, so it can be indexed and retrieved. By supporting solutions from Akonix, Communicator Inc., FaceTime Communications, and IMlogic, we are offering our customers the ability to choose a solution that best meets their Instant Messaging needs.”

Iron Mountain’s Digital Archives service offers universal electronic records archiving and indexing across all assets, including email, Instant Messaging, enterprise statements and reports, and images, and provides Third-Party Downloader services to meet requirements mandated by the SEC. Iron Mountain’s Enterprise Value Archives Architecture (EVAA) formulates and translates Instant Message communications into an electronic record that can be retained in a searchable index database and retrieved through an Iron Mountain web interface.

Customers can choose to combine Iron Mountain’s Digital Archives and Third-Party Downloader services with Instant Messaging management solutions, including Akonix’s Akonix L7 Enterprise, Communicator’s Hub IM, FaceTime Communication’s IM Auditor Enterprise, and IMlogic’s IM Manager.

The combined compliant service gives enterprises the ability to centrally manage and control Instant Messaging communications between employees, partners, and customers.

Iron Mountain Protects Its Own Data

Iron Mountain took steps to protect its own data recently with the deployment of 1,800 seats of Connected Corporation’s automated data protection service to safeguard the data stored on its corporate laptops.

Iron Mountain’s executive managers and traveling sales personnel save business-critical documents and presentations to their personal machines on a daily basis. Mobile employees work in a high-risk environment, where data can be easily compromised during transit, whether from a technology failure or a stolen laptop. So in addition to partnering with Connected to offer PC Electronic Vaulting services to its own customers, Iron Mountain deployed Connected technology throughout its own organization.

“Connected provides us with the comfort that the data saved to our corporate laptops will be protected at all times, and can be restored if it is compromised in any way,” says Kevin Roden, chief information officer for Iron Mountain. “As a company, we practice what we preach. We’ve partnered with Connected in order to provide our own customers with PC Electronic Vaulting services because we believe Connected is the absolute best solution for PC data protection. We also want the same level of protection for our own business.”

The solution’s Backup and Retrieve function enables Iron Mountain to quickly restore lost or damaged files due to instances such as data corruption, mistakes, viruses, or lost laptops. Connected’s data reduction technology backs up only the most recent changes to a document and saves copies of shared files only once, reducing costs associated with storing the same files several times. The data reduction process is also a benefit to mobile workers because the data is compressed, alleviating the strain that can occur on network bandwidth connections when backing up large files.

“Since implementing Connected’s technology, we have avoided many instances of potential data loss, and have been able to easily manage the process of recovering files,” comments Roden. “We have also experienced superior recovery times, and our employees have been pleased overall with the solution’s ability to recover their system settings as well as lost documents.”

Connected says research shows that two-thirds of mobile and remote users experience data loss due to laptop loss or damage, accidental file deletion, system crash, viruses, and other hazards of business travel.

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Paul Shread
Paul Shread
eSecurity Editor Paul Shread has covered nearly every aspect of enterprise technology in his 20+ years in IT journalism, including an award-winning series on software-defined data centers. He wrote a column on small business technology for Time.com, and covered financial markets for 10 years, from the dot-com boom and bust to the 2007-2009 financial crisis. He holds a market analyst certification.

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