The Information Technology department is responsible for providing quality technology services to the employees of Wood County. The Information Technology department oversees technology use in all county offices and works closely with other county officials to develop and improve county software and technology services both to the employees of the county and the citizens of Wood County.
The Problem
As a government institution Wood County in Texas is required by government regulations to archive all inbound and outbound emails for at least 90 days. Additionally, under the Public Information Act, the county is required to provide citizens with copies of certain emails upon request. These regulations had Randy Parrish, Chief Technology Officer for the county, searching for the right email archiving solution for some time. In the meantime, Wood County did not have a proper solution in place so archiving was done manually and depended on the county’s email client.
A New Solution
Parrish was familiar with Astaro products as he uses the Astaro Security Gateway to protect Wood County’s network. The county already had one Astaro Security Gateway 320, one 220 and three 120s protecting their vast network. “I like the functions of the Astaro units, and when I heard Astaro had developed a mail archiving solution I figured I would give it a try to see if it had the same quality and usability I had come to expect from Astaro,” Parrish explained.
Success with Astaro Mail Archiving
Using the beta version of the Astaro Mail Archiving service, Wood County was able to meet government email archiving requirements as well as their responsibilities towards the county’s citizens under the Public Information Act. The hosted service provides unlimited email storage so the county does not have to worry about incurring additional archiving costs or running out of storage space. The Astaro Mail Archiving service also makes it possible to comply with requests for copies of email messages, as it not only provides automatic archiving services but also makes searching and finding archived emails much simpler. Parrish continued: “The quick search function in the Astaro Mail Archiving service eliminates the need for our IT staff to archive emails manually and helps them to spend less time searching for archived emails.” Parrish also noted that the security features help eliminate rouge employees from seeing other user’s e-mail, requiring two admins’ to input passwords to perform searches of other users’ emails.
In addition to solving the county’s email archiving compliance issues, the Astaro Mail Archiving services, Parrish also believes it will aid in the county’s disaster recovery planning. “Because emails are stored in the cloud, if something were to happen to our datacenter all emails would still be saved, secure, and accessible. This relieves a significant amount of stress off our IT infrastructure,” said Parrish.
About Astaro Mail Archiving Service
Astaro Mail Archiving is a hosted service that is set up within 15 minutes. The service provides unlimited storage and users can find archived email quickly and easily through a convenient Microsoft Outlook plug-in.
For more information about Astaro Mail Archiving watch this short video here: http://www.astaro.com/landingpages/2min-explainer-ama.
