" email archival Archives - LuxSci

Posts Tagged ‘email archival’

Increasing Resiliency with Data Backups

Tuesday, June 21st, 2022

Making backups of collected data is a critically important part of risk management. Backups provide redundancy in case of human errors, hardware failure, cyberattacks, power failure, and natural disasters. Properly implemented backups reduce risk and provide organizations flexibility when systems go down. Server outages, whether accidental or malicious, can be detrimental to business operations, and adequately implemented backups can help mitigate the effects and save time and money.

data backups

What is a Data Backup?

Backups are copies of data, files, and directories found on the disk at a specific time. Backups are used to restore files in case of an outage or accident. They are not the same as an email archive and are insufficient to meet compliance data storage requirements. This is because backups may not capture all sent and received data. If files are added and deleted in between backup times, they will not appear on the most recent backup. See Email Backup or Archival: What’s the Difference for more information.

LuxSci performs daily and weekly backups of email, WebAides, Widgets, MySQL databases, FTP, and website data in customer accounts. If data is misplaced or deleted accidentally, LuxSci’s support team can quickly and easily restore it from any available snapshots.

Ways to Configure Data Backups

How backups are configured can drastically affect how information is stored and retrieved. Backups are typically located on-site or off-site. On-site backups are located in essentially the same place as the original data, while off-site backups are located far away from the originals. It is fast and easy to recover data using an on-site backup. Still, if the location is affected by a cyberattack or natural disaster, both the original data and the on-site backups could be compromised or destroyed. Off-site backups are isolated from the original system and act as a fail-safe. It is slower to recover data from off-site backups and often costlier to maintain.

At LuxSci, we provide both on-site and off-site backups. This enables fast daily backups of recent changes and longer-term weekly backups. This backup schedule also ensures that separate, independent copies are kept in geographically distant locations for disaster planning reasons. We also create custom backup schedules for enterprise customers.

Preparing for Disaster

Cyberattacks like ransomware allow criminals to take control of an organization’s systems and hold data hostage. By backing up systems properly, administrators can restore data without paying the ransom.

Ensuring copies of data remain available even in an emergency requires extensive preparation and planning. It’s important to understand which systems and data are the most crucial and create a plan to protect them. Cyberattacks and natural disasters may limit access to on-site backups. In this case, it is helpful to have off-site backups available. Isolating off-site backups from the main infrastructure helps protect data in the event of a cyberattack or natural disaster.

Administrators should also take special consideration for confidential or sensitive information. When drafting a backup policy for disaster recovery, some issues to consider include:

  • Identifying who is responsible for performing backups.
  • Specifying where the backup data are to be located.
  • Establishing how to access the files and how to log access to sensitive information.
  • Creating a schedule for backing up data.
  • Performing backups of digital data.
  • Automating backups.
  • Backing up the metadata along with the data.
  • Encrypting data at rest.
  • Determining how long to keep backups.

HIPAA Considerations

Compliance regulations may also influence the organization’s backup policy. It goes without saying that organizations that work with protected health information need to use a backup solution that is HIPAA-compliant. Backups need the proper access controls and encryption to comply with HIPAA regulations. To keep sensitive data protected and resistant to cyberattacks, contact LuxSci today.

Is Email Archival Required by HIPAA?

Tuesday, April 5th, 2022

Customers often inquire if email archival is required by HIPAA regulations.

There is a great deal of confusion and uncertainty here because:

  1. HIPAA lists many requirements but does not provide specific instructions on implementing them. It’s ambiguous but provides a great deal of flexibility for organizations.
  2. Email archival adds a fixed cost to any email solution – and everyone prefers to avoid unnecessary costs.
  3. Due to time and budgetary constraints, many organizations want to do the minimum needed for compliance.

email archival hipaa

In our opinion, email archival is an implicit requirement of HIPAA for all organizations that send ePHI via email. In the next section, we’ll review why.

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Outbound Email Encryption for Google Workspace

Tuesday, October 5th, 2021

Google Workspace is one of the world’s most popular email platforms. Although it is more than adequate for basic email correspondence, Gmail does not come configured to meet HIPAA email security requirements. To use Google Workspace in a HIPAA-compliant manner, you need to use a third-party connector to secure your communications.

outbound email encryption for google

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10 Tips for Preventing Ransomware Attacks

Tuesday, November 10th, 2020

You’re already working long hours. Economic pressures are growing, and your team is running on empty. Now you need to mitigate yet another problem. Preventing ransomware attacks and mitigating their extreme financial impacts (an average of $8,500/hour of downtime) is essential. The following best practices can help your IT and healthcare administrators protect your systems.

Avoiding Ransomware

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What Is Email Archiving and Why Do I Need It?

Thursday, November 1st, 2018

The digital era has changed many things about the way people communicate. In the case of businesses and organizations, especially in the healthcare sector, the changes have been significant. For instance, the threat of fraud and data theft is forcing businesses to keep track of all the messages shared between employees and stakeholders.

Despite the availability of multiple communication tools, email is still the most preferred option for large-scale corporate and organizational-level communication. It estimated that over 250 billion emails are sent each day.

A business with just 1000 employees can generate around 40,000 emails per day. Needless to say, that’s a phenomenal number of emails and keeping track of each one can be tedious. However, it needs to be done, considering the fact that many of those emails contain critical information. In the case of healthcare organizations, those emails can even contain confidential patient data.

Email Archiving is the Answer

It is required that healthcare providers and organizations engaging in HIPAA-compliant emails practice email archiving. Email archiving allows healthcare companies to make things easier by providing them with the confidence that their communications are protected from prying eyes, while also being accessible to authorized personnel via as needed, even during emergencies and email system outages.

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