Symantec releases next-gen email archiving software

Computerworld - Symantec today announced its next-generation email and content archiving software, Enterprise Vault 10, which now purports to automatically classify email content and metadata and assign the appropriate archiving and retention policy to it.

Enterprise Vault 10 also has the ability to capture and archive social networking interactions for regulatory compliance. Symantec originally announced that capability at the company's Visions 2011 conference in May.

Through the new archiving feature, any posts to an organization's publicly-facing social media outlets -- including blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds -- can be preserved to comply with open-records requests and industry regulations such as the supervision requirements under the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

Symantec said it was able to add social media capture through its partnerships with Actiance, CommonDesk, Globanet, Hanzo and Socialware.

Enterprise Vault 10's classification technology can also be used as a filter to speed up the search and review process for electronic discovery and legal hold requests in civil suits, the company said.

Enterprise Vault 10 integrates Symantec's Data Loss Prevention v11 technology, which analyzes Microsoft Exchange email content and metadata in order to determine where and for how long messages should be stored. Depending on the email body, messages can even be flagged by the application to be reviewed for compliance reasons.

"We've increased the scale and performance of Enterprise Vault so our customers can effectively archive and [electronically discover] the millions of records employees are creating by email, social media, SharePoint and file systems," Brian Dye, vice president of product management for Symantec, said in a statement.

Dye said Enterprise Vault 10 reduces regulatory risk without inhibiting the business and productivity benefits of social media and collaboration tools.

Enterprise Vault 10 also includes new data-tiering technology that moves less-frequently accessed information off expensive primary storage and servers to lower-tiered storage, on-premise or to the cloud. It also includes global deduplication, which is aimed at ensuring only one copy of a file or message is stored throughout an enterprise.

And Enterprise Vault 10 can automatically locate and migrate existing .PST and .NSF files into a new archive environment.

Lucas Mearian covers storage, disaster recovery and business continuity, financial services infrastructure and health care IT for Computerworld. Follow Lucas on Twitter at @lucasmearian or subscribe to Lucas's RSS feed . His e-mail address is lmearian@computerworld.com.

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