Let's not forget that good service nowadays includes responding in a timely manner to emails from customers, partners, or suppliers. The ability to achieve constant improvements in this service, while at the same time lowering costs, as well as increasing the efficiency and productivity of email processes is undoubtedly a challenge you too are confronted with in your daily business life. Last but not least, we're also talking about the ability to create a persuasive case for your organization in the competitive environment. Once you have made a decision to confront the clearly highlighted challenges in all their various guises, there is no getting away from the need to configure your email infrastructure in a manner that will guarantee secure, automated, and rapid communication in accordance with all relevant regulations.

The interaction of email archiving and security: the integrated approach that keeps you out of trouble
Email management solutions developed for Domino architectures support your strategies and place a wealth of extremely useful tools at your disposal. They enable you to control the day-to-day flow of emails on your Domino Server and extract the best from the electronic correspondence medium. Bear in mind however, that corresponding solutions adopt an integrated approach that fuses email archiving with email security, and tailors them to suit your company's processes. Only in this way can you reconcile technical and organizational standards with one another, while at the same time ensuring full compliance with all legal obligations and business requirements concerning email communication.

Security covering the entire lifecycle of your emails
Now let's look a little more closely at email security. The key issue here is the interaction between the various areas; that is, the linking of virus protection, spam/content protection, encryption and legal disclaimers. For this reason, up-and-coming solutions work with Lotus Notes databases in which flexible rules are defined. Email traffic is passed through the relevant solution in accordance with these rules.

For example, an email can be encrypted centrally on the Domino Server (e.g. PGP, S/Mime) and then immediately checked for viruses and spam. Several technologies can be interfaced in this process. Spam protection can incorporate text-analysis and classification technologies or current spam patterns for example. And the best part? Your employees remain completely unaware of the process. They simply receive an encrypted and scanned email.

Conversely, this process can be configured in the same way for an outgoing email. A staff member sends an email from the Notes client. The email is intercepted on the mail server, where the email management solution reviews it for confidential content and viruses. It then adds a legal disclaimer to the message before archiving and delivering it. As a result, the entire lifecycle of an email--from its processing stage, through to its administration and right up to the archiving stage--is fully secured without placing any additional burden on the end user or administrator.