Journal Archiving in the Modern Era: A Comprehensive Guide

What do we mean by “Journaling”?

The term ‘Journaling’ is defined as the ability to record all communications for use in the company retention or archiving policy. This is generally implemented as part of a legal or compliancy regulation on behalf of the organization. In short, the email is copied from the mailbox into a dedicated sandbox for storing. It creates an exact copy (including Metadata) of the email original. Microsoft invented the “Journal Mailbox” during the mid-90s for on-premise Exchange solution, specifically aimed at the newly implemented SEC requirements for brokers and traders in the finance sector.

What is the difference with “Archiving”?

The term ‘Archiving’ refers to the physical moving of files (email) from their native location, i.e., an Exchange server/Office 365, and storing them elsewhere for ongoing management, retrieval, and backup storage. Archiving is generally perceived to be a strategy of backup and restore in a Disaster Recovery Framework, whereas Journaling is more of an ongoing audit of communications.

Regulatory requirements launch journaling

To date, at least two government regulatory bodies specify a journaling strategy for electronic communications. Journaling ensures that an email conversation and string of metadata is captured immediately, registered for auditable purposes and allows the organization to use this communications and immutable properties in a legally defensible position.

Litigation hold and journaling

Other reasons companies utilize email journaling is for litigation purposes; when a lawsuit is filed (or anticipated), the companies affected are required to locate and place a litigation hold on all potentially relevant data in the expectation of a later eDiscovery order.

Office 365 and Journaling

If your company does journal email, the question you should ask is can Office 365 archiving work with journaling? The simple answer is no. Instead, Microsoft suggests an on-premise or third-party cloud archive to be used as the journal mailbox.

Workarounds and Their Drawbacks

Since Office 365 archiving doesn’t support journal capture, customers have devised many workarounds. Some of these include utilizing shared mailboxes for journal data, “exploding” legacy journals, keeping your on-premise Exchange server active, and using a proprietary third-party journal archive vendor.

Archive360’s Archive2Azure platform enables customers to onboard their legacy journal data and stream live journal data while keeping the journal contents completely intact with zero metadata loss or data conversion.

Benefits of Archive2Azure

Companies can now take advantage of their Azure tenancy to store and manage their legacy journal data as well as take live journal data from Office 365. With this solution, you no longer need to worry about being locked into a contract with a third party vendor, manage additional issues with shared O365 mailboxes, or the extra expense of keeping an on-premise Exchange server active.