Symantec to Combine eDiscovery, Data Loss Prevention, and Encryption

Symantec Corp. announced Symantec Enterprise Vault 10, Enterprise Vault.cloud, and Cloud Storage for Enterprise Vault to enable organizations to manage and discover their information with speed, efficiency and scale, on-premise and in the cloud.

Symantec Enterprise Vault 10 software will add new integration with Symantec’s data loss prevention and encryption technologies to archive and discover organizations’ information without compromising confidential information, in addition to allowing organizations to discover data stored in the cloud and from social networks. Symantec’s Software-as-a-Service-based Enterprise Vault.cloud will offer unlimited cloud storage for e-mail, with rapid search and access, for a flat fee per mailbox per month.

According to Gartner, law firms and eDiscovery service providers will require their clients to adopt more formal information management processes to help reduce the costs and risks associated with discovery. Companies without an information governance strategy and archiving solutions will spend approximately 33 percent more on eDiscovery. (Cooperation Is Key for Managing E-Discovery in 2010, Gartner, March 11, 2010)

"Information streams are evolving from email to social networks and archives are moving from on-premise to the cloud, causing IT administrators to lose sleep over managing information and lawyers to debate new retention policies," said Brian Dye, vice president of product management, Symantec. "Symantec Enterprise Vault and Enterprise Vault.cloud removes the stress from IT and legal users with its best of breed archiving technology to allow greater control and visibility into the archives to reduce eDiscovery costs."

Classifying Specific Emails
A new feature of Enterprise Vault 10 is the Data Classification Service (DCS). It leverages Symantec’s data loss prevention technology to analyze email content and metadata to automatically classify the email and assign the appropriate archiving and retention policy for that message or even flag the message to be reviewed for compliance reasons. Classifications can also be used as filters to speed up the search and review process for eDiscovery. Additionally, customers who have implemented it can share classification policies to simplify the automated classification of information. Enterprise Vault also adds new integration with Symantec’s encryption technologies to allow organizations to effectively classify, store, and discover encrypted information.

Social Media Archiving
Posts to an organization’s publicly-facing social media outlets including blogs, Facebook pages and Twitter feeds are considered business communications that must be preserved according to the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails, instant messages and other electronic records. Through new partnerships with CommonDesk, FaceTime, Globanet, Hanzo and Socialware, Enterprise Vault 10 archives social media interactions for compliance, eDiscovery or corporate governance purposes. Organizations can comply with requirements for social media communications without restricting or banning the use of those tools.

On-premise, Hybrid, and in the Cloud
Symantec will continue to enhance its Symantec.cloud email archiving service under the name Symantec Enterprise Vault.cloud. This change will take place beginning in June 2011. The service enables organizations of all sizes to address the challenges of email storage management, legal discovery, and regulatory compliance, with a purely hosted archiving service. With no hardware, software, or plug-ins to install and maintain, this solution offers unlimited email storage and retention in secure enterprise-class data centers for a flat fee per mailbox per month.

Symantec also announced Enterprise Vault Cloud Storage for Nirvanix, a hybrid model designed to make using the cloud for archiving as easy as managing on-premise storage while also lowering costs. The Symantec connector for Enterprise Vault Cloud Storage for Nirvanix optimizes how businesses use the cloud to archive information.

"The new components of Symantec’s Enterprise Vault focus on solving what we expect to soon be new challenges in the overall archive and information retention space around social media content and advancing SharePoint management," said Brian Babineau, vice president of research and analyst services of Enterprise Strategy Group. "While Symantec is addressing the future of enterprise collaboration, they are also adding automated classification, enhanced search and cloud capabilities to help organizations address today’s archiving challenges – the massive data growth."

"Social media sites, particularly Facebook, have become such an important part of our marketing team’s efforts and we don’t want to restrict access to those networks," said Gregg Davis, senior vice president and CIO, Webcor Builders. "We’ve been an Enterprise Vault customer for a number of years, and it’s been an invaluable tool for helping us manage email records and comply with eDiscovery requests. Facebook is quickly becoming as popular a communications tool for us as email, and we need the ability to archive social media interactions the same way do emails."

"Social networking is pervasive across the financial services industry for building business relationships throughout roles including marketing, sales, and recruiting, and that presents the same demands for effective information management and discovery as email has required," said Mike Williams, vice president of strategy, Socialware. "Partnering with Symantec enables our customers to overcome the barriers to leveraging social media while still satisfying the industry’s strict requirements governing communications."

"The integration of Hanzo Enterprise Web Archive and Symantec Enterprise Vault 10 and Discovery Accelerator provides organizations with the unique ability to combine business content flowing through websites, SharePoint, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networks, all in one place," said Mark Middleton, CEO of Hanzo Archiveshttp://www.hanzoarchives.com. "Our joint solution, based around our Web Archive Connector, helps streamline the archiving process for organizations bridging into new media."

"The addition of Symantec Enterprise Vault to our ‘One Click to the Cloud’ solution portfolio is an important move to address the long-term archiving of information to the enterprise-grade cloud," said Scott Genereux, president & CEO, Nirvanixhttp://www.nirvanix.com. "The cloud model changes the whole acquisition cycle and avoids the maintenance and technology upgrade costs. Symantec Enterprise Vault Cloud Storage for Nirvanix simplifies archiving right out of the box and leverages global cloud economics to positively impact business."

Symantec Enterprise Vault 10 is scheduled to be available worldwide in the second half of the year.