Although data privacy and identity theft have a higher profile in the minds of consumers, data retention issues can have a far greater financial impact on businesses. Every company, whether public or private, large or small, must have a policy and enforcement system to deal with the messages and files generated by the organization every day. E-mail has become especially important, since it has become the dominant form of business communication. Data retention policies generally exist to allow companies to comply with regulations or address legal entanglements. But although most companies understand the need for such a policy, few have reliably implemented it: Osterman Research shows that although 43% of surveyed companies had a policy for e-mail retention, only 12% automated compliance with an archiving solution. The rest presumably rely on backup systems and end-user habits to protect e-mail, neither of which is a reliable option. Legal experts tell us that having a policy that is not enforced causes greater harm during litigation than having no policy all.
