Compliance Essentials: A Guide to Email Retention Laws

Email has become an essential tool in digital business communication. With its development, many companies have raised the question of how long vital email information needs to be stored. This is where email retention laws come into play.

In this article, we will address the reality of email archiving and focus on the process of developing a retention policy. 

We will do this by pointing out email retention law examples and going through some best practices for email retention.

What Are Email Retention Laws?

An email retention law is a regulatory act that defines the period for which email messages need to be stored before being permanently deleted. Their purpose is to pressure companies and businesses into protecting important information while meeting legal requirements.

An email retention law is enforced through an email retention policy. Each company that deals with sensitive information must implement one. A company can even have multiple retention policies that can differ based on different department rules.

Email retention periods vary depending on regulations that govern different industry sectors. There are specialized retention laws for each sector, like healthcare, finance, etc.

This makes having an email retention policy highly important for your company.

Let’s see why.

Why Are Email Retention Policies Important?

Implementing email retention policies within your company’s workflow is important. Not only that, but this practice is beneficial as well.

Here are some of the reasons why an email retention policy is important:

• It enables proper data management using email archiving software
• It ensures legal compliance with data protection laws
• It promotes trust and builds reputation among clients
• It reduces the risk of data and financial loss

An email retention policy is also important because it helps to reduce overall company costs. It enables a quick and efficient reaction to a legal hold in case of litigation, speeding up email recovery.

How Long Should Emails Be Retained For?

Determining the time period for email retention varies depending on different factors.

There are three main factors to consider.

1. The email retention legal requirements point to the individual state and country laws that dictate the email retention time period.
2. The industry standards are best practices within specific industries that dictate how long emails should be retained.
3. The specific needs of an individual business can also dictate the time of email retention. They often point to the type of personal data storage. They also point to the collaboration and communication between employees, etc.

The legal framework requirements are the most important ones. They dictate the involvement and impact of the other two.

Laws regarding email retention in the US

Different countries have different email retention laws. 

Here’s a table of retention laws and retention time periods in the US.

Regulatory body	Who does it apply to	Retention period
Internal Revenue Service (IRS)	All companies	7 years
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)	Federal, state, and local agencies	3 years
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Regulations	Telecommunication companies	2 years
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Regulations	Banks	5 years
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Regulations	Pharmaceutical industries	2 years
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)	Healthcare organizations	6 years
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS)	Credit card companies	1 year
Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) Regulations	Investment banks, brokers, insurance companies, etc.	7 years
Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Act	All public companies	7 years

Email retention periods in other countries

Other countries have their own laws that regulate aspects of electronic document retention.

Canada, for example, uses the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). It requires companies to retain email documents for an indefinite amount of time until their purpose is fulfilled.

The United Kingdom’s Data Protection Act 2018 also states that companies should retain their email documents for as long as needed.

The same is true for the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), used by the European Union.

Email Retention Policy Best Practices

Developing an effective email retention policy requires you to follow some general best practices.

These best practices are used by successful companies worldwide to safeguard sensitive electronic data and effectively respond to potential litigation.

Create a team of department collaborators

The development of email retention regulations means the collaboration between an IT and a legal department.

These two departments share certain responsibilities when it comes to email retention. 

Making sure they meet, exchange ideas, and ultimately collaborate with each other is key to developing a strong retention policy.

Understand the legal requirements

Understanding the legal requirements is the next important step in creating a sample email retention policy for private companies.

As you can see from the table above, each industry is regulated by a separate email retention law.

Based on the law in your industry, you must research and determine the exact retention length that will apply to your company.

Once you’ve determined that, then you can move on to assessing the email retention needs of your company.

Assess the email retention needs of your company

The next step is for the team of department collaborators to assess your company’s business and technical needs for email retention.

Following this, they will create an inventory of data types containing all the electronic document forms your company works with. 

After assessing the most important data types, the team will proceed with the next step of the process.

Create classification and procedure methods for retention

Your team’s next step is to create procedures by which email data will be classified.

Emails can be classified based on the information they contain. They can also be categorized based on the retention period, depending on the regulatory law in your country.

As far as procedure methods are concerned, the best one is to use eDiscovery software paired with cloud solutions. This software type archives and stores emails and can be used for data review and retrieval later as well.

Review and implement the policy

Reviewing and implementing the policy is the last step. The legal team will go through, finding irregularities and fixing them if need be. They have to make sure to stick by the email retention laws that the policy abides by.

After the review is complete, it’s time to start educating and training your employees to follow the new policy.

Every person in your company must be informed about the information in the retention policy and their role in the overall process.

Conclusion

Email retention laws play a crucial part in guiding companies and organizations to safeguard their sensitive data.

Failing to comply with them can result in enormous fines, as well as other sanctions. No company wants this, so staying prepared and storing emails for safekeeping is important.

If you want your company to be compliant with the law, then you must have strong email retention regulations in place.

We hope that in this article, you will find the instructions needed to take the first step.