E-mails: to delete or not.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: Delete? - Brief Article

If they have not done so already, organizations will need to include e-mail in their records management and document retention plans. E-mail is pervasive in organizations of all types today, and e-mails have proven to be significant in many recent court cases--so much so that e-mail messages have helped influence verdicts.

For this reason, securities regulators recently notified six large Wall Street investment banking firms that they may be fined a total of $10 million for deleting e-mail messages. According to the Wall Street Journal, officials of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), National Association of Securities Dealers, and the New York Stock Exchange notified the banks that their enforcement staffs recommended that the companies be fined $1.67 million each for not complying with current e-mail retention policies, which require securities firms to...