In the past, the email server of Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft was under intense strain due to the large and evergrowing amount of data. The performance of the email server was not ideal and the tradition-rich banking institution was confronted with new legal regulations of the Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) concerning the retention of electronic correspondence. Both challenges were solved with an advanced email archiving solution from Arcplace.
Cross-border private banking and wealth management
Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft has its headquarters in Zurich and a subsidiary in Frankfurt am Main. As a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest financial groups, Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe Deutschland, the bank offers German and Swiss clients a comprehensive portfolio of services with a focus on private banking and wealth management. The specialists of Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft are familiar with the risks and opportunities of global capital markets and with the tax-related and legal framework conditions of the target markets and have long-standing experience in the management of medium-sized family companies. The cross-border banking group manages assets worth approximately CHF 9 billion and has 140 employees.
“We achieved all of our goals in terms of easing the load on the system and fulfilling compliance requirements. The Arcplace team designed and implemented the solution with a high level of professionalism – we are very satisfied.”
Oliver Hitz – System Administrator, Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft, Switzerland
Mail server under intense strain and new compliance requirements
Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft uses Microsoft Exchange for the central management of emails, appointments, contacts and tasks, and the employees use Microsoft Outlook at their workplaces.
In the past, the lack of systematic email archiving often caused problems. The entire email traffic used to be recorded with the help of the journaling function of Microsoft Exchange. However, this solution no longer satisfied the newly released statutory regulations. The bank urgently needed a new and efficient email archiving solution.
The following key requirements were defined for the solution:
- Reduction of the email system load through systematic archiving
- Fully automated archiving without user interaction
- Processing of proprietary PST files (PST files are the container files of Outlook in which tasks, notes, emails and the calendar are stored)
- Full conformity with new compliance requirements
An archiving solution based on Symantec Enterprise Vault
Zurich-based Arcplace, specialists in digital archiving designed and implemented a user-friendly email archiving solution on the basis of ‘Symantec Enterprise Vault’. With this industry-leading archiving software, enterprise data can automatically be consolidated and systematically archived from email systems, PST files, file systems, Microsoft SharePoint systems and instant messaging applications. In accordance with the defined rules, the individual emails and their attachments are automatically swapped out of the Exchange mailbox and archived in an audit-proof manner.
User-friendly and compliant with legal regulations
With the new email archiving solution from Arcplace, Frankfurter Bankgesellschaft was able to solve the existing challenges elegantly. Today its employees have email inboxes with a virtually unlimited capacity. The growth of the message repository is constantly monitored in the background. As the Exchange Server now only needs to manage the latest information, its performance has improved significantly.
The user-friendly solution is integrated seamlessly with Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook, meets all current compliance requirements and offers excellent flexibility. It allows extensive research (e-discovery) to be carried out quickly and reliably with the help of high-performance search and filter options. The legally compliant storage of emails takes place in-house on an archive store with soft-WORM functionality. WORM stands for ‘write once, read many’ and describes measures that permanently prevent the deletion, overwriting and modification of data on a storage medium.
One particular advantage of this solution is that archived emails remain permanently visible to employees in Outlook (a small icon marks them as archived) and can easily and transparently be viewed via Outlook, Outlook Web Access (OWA) or extended Web-based search functions and also be restored if necessary. Advanced technologies like ‘single instancing’ help to reduce the storage needs associated with the archiving by storing identical data only once.
At a glance
- Email archiving solution seamlessly integrated with Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Outlook
- Fully automated archiving without end user interaction according to flexibly configurable rules
- Archived emails remain visible to the end user and can be opened with a mouse click
- Reduced need for storage space and lower storage costs on the email system
- Comprehensive search functions (e-discovery) in the field of compliance guarantees transparency and control
- Shorter backup and restore times
- Guaranteed conformity of corporate and statutory compliance regulations
