Sarbanes-Oxley and how it relates to email archiving.

Everyone knows how email is such a trusted medium of communication, and Enron of the world show you how you as an organization must protect yourself of rough employees. With the implementation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), business records must now be protected at all junctures to prevent document tampering and destruction.
The SOX rules also serve to promote corporate accountability; especially when a company is involved in audits, investigations, litigation or other formal proceedings.

By using Microsoft Exchange Hosted Archive, you will achieve this compliance.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act holds the management in charge of corporate disclosures accountable for its actions. It also offers IT managers guidance on what data they need to retain.

Although trivialized by mixed personal and business content, e-mails are, in fact, corporate documents and should be preserved. The courts will treat e-mail messages and attachments as business records that must be retained to achieve regulatory compliance. Most large companies have a policy on e-mail communication retention.

The effects of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 reach further than just the publicly listed companies. If you do business with public companies, you may have already been asked to become compliant. Thus, it is difficult to quantify the ripple effect of the Act on how we will do business in the years to come. Most IT managers do not really understand the importance of the new regulations, and I think that ethical discussions and education on the topic will be the key for achieving compliance.

SOX Section 404 (Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404) mandates that all publicly-traded companies must establish internal controls and procedures for financial reporting and must document, test and maintain those controls and procedures to ensure their effectiveness. The purpose of SOX is to reduce the possibilities of corporate fraud by increasing the stringency of procedures and requirements for financial reporting.