A couple of months ago, I postulated here that, far from being dead, email is alive and kicking in business organizations around the world. We talked about how to secure those messages from attackers, but that’s only part of the problem inherent in managing an email system. There’s another type of outsider to whom you might someday have to give access to all those internal communications: the legal system. Regulatory agencies can demand to audit your mail system, or courts can subpoena stored mail messages that are evidentiary in nature as part of the discovery process in the event of a lawsuit or criminal charges. That means you’d better have a good email archiving system in place. But what exactly are the characteristics of a good system?