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Why You Shouldn’t Be Using PST Files

Don’t Rely on Dangerous & Difficult to Manage PST Files Personal archives (PST or NSF files) have often been used by business

Don’t Rely on Dangerous & Difficult to Manage PST Files

Personal archives (PST or NSF files) have often been used by business and the public sector to keep more emails and attachments than allowed by their mailbox quota. These are usually stored on network drives and only serve to make the backup process even longer. But this isn’t the only reason why you shouldn’t be using them.

PSTs are not only difficult to manage, but dangerous as well. Emails are corporate business records and they should be archived in such a way that they are easy to find if needed at a later date. However, PST files may be stored locally and not on the corporate file server or even on company premises.

Also, these files are not suited to the long-term storage of large amounts of data and they are easily corrupted and can often become unusable. Add to this the fact that users could easily delete them by accident or even take them when they leave the company and it’s easy to see the dangers.

Once a user has created a personal archive file and has deleted the original email from the company server, it becomes an impossibility to access the emails and their attachments for record retention, compliance audits, legal cases, HR investigations or business reasons such as contracts, decision trails, approvals or timestamps.

Put bluntly, no one – whether they’re public or private sector organisations of any kind – should be using PST files to store email records and, if you are, you need to get them under control to prevent serious problems further down the line.

An email archiving solution can solve these problems as it eliminates mailbox quotas entirely, captures every email sent and received and stubs any attachments. As such, archiving software eliminates the need for PST or NSF files within the organization.

How MailMeter Can Help

With MailMeter from Waterford Technologies, emails and their attachments are archived and easily searched through a browser or Microsoft Outlook Add-In. The software gives users an almost unlimited space in which to store emails and attachments while remaining in-line with compliance rules, thereby negating any need for PSTs.

What’s more, when you install MailMeter, it imports emails from all existing mail servers as well PST and NSF files – so it really helps you to get your email under control and eliminate PST files from your organization forever.

We have helped a variety of organizations including Donegal County Council to massively reduce their email footprint and stop using PST files. So, if you would like us to help your organization as well, get in touch with the team for more information on how MailMeter can help your business and a personalized demo of our solution.