Compliance Solution Framework

Making sure that e-mail in your company is journalized is a broad requirement. How you comply with this request is defined by the specific regulation that your company must follow and the advice of your legal counsel. For example, complying with a regulation that requires supervision of employee claims differs from a regulation that requires retention of all company officer communications. In either case, you must understand how your messaging data fits in your company's broader journaling solution.

Compliance solution framework refers to the IT infrastructure that your organization has implemented to comply with the specific regulations that apply to your industry. This framework includes journaling of specific data classes, such as document storage solutions, messaging systems, fax systems, and telephone communications. Another piece of this framework is storing and managing the data after it is captured. Finally, the framework may need to provide for searching, sorting, and otherwise manipulating the stored data.

Because of each company's unique criteria, including the existing IT infrastructure, the organization of the enterprise, and the regulation with which your company must comply, the compliance solution framework is a custom solution. For that reason, Exchange journaling is flexible in how the messaging data is delivered into the compliance solution framework.

There are many vendors and third-party partners that Microsoft works with to provide a full journaling solution. For more information about these vendors, see Supporting Regulatory Compliance with Exchange Server 2003.