Bakersfield, Calif. (April 26, 2010) – While federal eDiscovery regulations were established four years ago, states have only recently enacted their own specific rules on data retention and electronically stored information. In response, K-12 educational institutions increasingly are reviewing their policies and procedures, and implementing email archiving solutions. As a leader in network security and management software for schools, Lightspeed Systems has released an information paper on email archiving that provides advice and best practices to help schools comply with federal and state eDiscovery rules and avoid costly penalties.

Today, almost every organization’s communication relies heavily on email and instant messaging. Simple backups are no longer a viable or acceptable option to meet recent federal and state regulations, or to handle the growing amount of emails that need to be retained. Many districts have yet to implement an email archiving solution because of unclear regulations, budget cuts, lack of time and resource, and few applications built for educational needs. Data retention is necessary to comply with regulations, to respond to lawsuits, and to manage organizational knowledge.

“Many districts were advised to wait to implement email archiving until there were clear guidelines and rules from their state,” said Terrell Tucker, director of information and technology services for Panama-Buena Vista Union School District in Bakersfield, Calif. “Now that many states have enacted eDiscovery rules, it’s imperative for school districts to evaluate their policies and implement solutions to manage the rapidly growing amount of electronic communications.”

In 2006, the Supreme Court amended the Federal Rules for Civic Procedures to cover the “discovery of information” in civil cases, including electronic information such as emails. Since then, 23 states have enacted regulations to augment or supplement federal requirements. Failure to comply with these regulations by not producing electronically stored information in a timely fashion could expose districts to fines and other penalties. Federal and state regulatory compliance is based on three factors: unaltered email retention, security, and auditability.

Lightspeed Systems’ information paper, “Email Archiving: What Schools Need to Know – And Do,” provides best practice recommendations to guide district administrators and IT staff in complying with regulations while minimizing costs and time. Some of the key tips are:

• Create a Data Retention Policy that includes procedures and solutions used for email archiving, and details on the length of time emails and other data will be stored.
• Bring together representatives from IT, legal, and human resources departments to formulate a sound and viable email archiving plan.
• Instruct users not to consider anything written or received on a school-provided email account as private.
• Archive emails for at least a couple of years, to comply with the statute of limitations on civil litigation in your state.
• Check your state guidelines. Many states have provided additional requirements—as well as specific guidance—for eDiscovery in their state.

With school budget cutbacks on the rise, schools need to find ways to reduce expenses across the board—including within their IT departments. Lightspeed Systems Email Manager is a cost-effective solution that helps schools archive and report on electronic communications, while blocking spam and filtering inappropriate content. Email Manager is available as a stand-alone application, or as a component of the company’s all-inclusive network security and management software, Total Traffic Control.

“We are using the email archiving component of Total Traffic Control, and we’ve been very pleased with our investment,” said Brady Hess, technology director for Benton Area School District in Benton, Pa. “Occasionally, we’ve had to recover emails from the archive, and the ability to retrieve that information quickly and easily is invaluable.”

Email Manager enables school IT administrators to search for archived items by suspicious keywords and phrases, custom keywords, sender and receiver IDs, subject text, and message body text. The journaling function indexes all mail traffic in a SQL database, and archives the mail and attachments for extensive reporting, flexible searching and long-term retrieval. Reports provide the ability to search and retrieve mail, as well as view the most active email users on the district’s domain. In addition to comprehensive email archiving capabilities, Email Manager provides powerful spam blocking, email management, and content filtering. For more information, visit www.lightspeedsystems.com.

More Information

Call 661-716-7600, or visit www.lightspeedsystems.com.

About Lightspeed Systems

Lightspeed Systems Inc., founded in 2000, develops comprehensive network security and management solutions for the K-12 education market. Lightspeed is committed to helping schools operate their networks effectively and efficiently, so educators can provide a safe online teaching and learning environment. The company’s flagship product integrates content filtering, spam management, bandwidth management, antivirus protection, extensive reporting capabilities, email archiving, and mobile filtering into a single application. Lightspeed Systems software is used in more than 1,500 school districts in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia to protect more than 5 million students. For the past three years, Lightspeed Systems has been recognized on the Inc. 5,000 list as one of fastest-growing private companies.

Contacts

Lightspeed Systems
Crystal Cochran
661-431-1649
crystal at lightspeedsystems dot com
www.lightspeedsystems.com

C. Blohm & Associates, Inc.
Kristen Plemon
608-839-9805
kristen at cblohm dot com
www.cblohm.com

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