Archive Communications for Regulatory Compliance |
| Preserve communications as complete, immutable records with full context for governance and defensible access. |
What is Communications Archiving?
Communications archiving is a governance capability that preserves business communications as complete, immutable records for compliance, legal, and audit use. It enables organizations to meet regulatory requirements such as SEC 17a-4, FINRA, FCA, and MiFID II by maintaining records with full context, metadata, and chain of custody.
Within the Arctera Unified Platform, archiving supports policy-driven retention, legal hold, and defensible disposition without duplication or reprocessing.
What Arctera Archive Does |
check-circle: Stores communications in immutable, WORM-compliant storage with full context and metadata
check-circle: Enforces policy-driven retention schedules across users, content types, and jurisdictions
check-circle: Applies retention, legal hold, and disposition policies based on classification and regulatory rules
check-circle: Maintains complete audit trails and chain of custody for all archived records
check-circle: Enables fast, high-performance search and retrieval for discovery and regulatory response
check-circle: Centralizes multi-channel communications and data into a single, governed system of record
How Archive Works
Archive operates within a continuous governance workflow. It receives communications from capture and classification, applies policy controls, and maintains a complete, auditable system of record.
Business Impact
Establish a single, defensible system of record
Eliminate fragmented archives and inconsistent records across systems. Archive preserves communications once with full context, ensuring every record remains complete, traceable, and defensible across workflows.
Reduce risk from over-retention and unmanaged data growth
Limit exposure from retaining data longer than required. Archive enforces retention and disposition automatically based on classification and policy, reducing data footprint while maintaining compliance.
Respond to regulatory and legal requests with confidence
Avoid delays when records are requested by regulators or legal teams. Archive maintains indexed, immutable records with full chain of custody, enabling fast retrieval without reconstructing data.
Enable continuous audit readiness across teams
Move from reactive audits to continuous readiness. Archive maintains audit trails and retention history, allowing teams to demonstrate how communications are governed at any time.
Unified Archiving Across the Enterprise
check-circle: Unified data foundation across all sources, systems, and formats
check-circle: Communications preserved with full context, metadata, and classification at ingestion
check-circle: Retention, legal hold, and disposition policies enforced consistently across all records
check-circle: Continuity maintained from capture through long-term, immutable storage
check-circle: Gaps from fragmented or siloed archives eliminated
check-circle: Single, auditable system of record for regulated data
Frequently Asked Questions
| Communications archiving is a governance capability that preserves business communications as complete, immutable records for compliance, legal, and audit purposes. Within a governance platform, archiving operates as part of a broader lifecycle that includes capture, classification, supervision, and discovery. It ensures communications are stored with full context, metadata, and chain of custody. Unlike basic storage or backup systems, archiving enforces retention policies, supports legal holds, and maintains auditability. This enables organizations to demonstrate how records are governed and retrieved over time. |
| Backup and storage systems are designed for recovery, not compliance. Backups are typically short-term, may be overwritten, and do not preserve records in a searchable or defensible format. Archiving creates a long-term, immutable system of record with policy-driven retention and audit controls. Archived data is indexed, searchable, and maintained with full context and chain of custody. This ensures it can be used as evidence in audits, investigations, and legal proceedings, which backup systems are not designed to support. |
| Arctera provides direct migration capabilities to move legacy archives into the platform without data loss or reprocessing. Using Direct Migrator, organizations can transfer data from systems such as Enterprise Vault, Microsoft 365, and other sources over the wire with full fidelity. Classification, retention, and metadata can be preserved or applied during migration, ensuring continuity of governance. The process supports migration of discovery and compliance work products, maintaining chain of custody and auditability throughout. |
| Archived communications are accessible through Personal Archive, which provides a secure, user-facing interface for retrieving historical data. Users can search and access emails, files, chats, and attachments from a browser, Outlook, or mobile device. The interface supports both quick and advanced search, enabling users to locate specific records efficiently. Access is controlled through role-based permissions and administrative policies, ensuring governance is maintained while enabling productivity. This allows users such as financial advisors, compliance reviewers, and managers to retrieve records on demand without IT involvement. |
| Arctera Archive is built with layered security controls across infrastructure, application, and data. All data is encrypted in transit and at rest using strong encryption standards, with role-based access controls and audit logging to track activity. The platform operates in a secure, multi-tenant architecture with logical data isolation and continuous monitoring. Customers can also use Manage Your Own Key (MYOK) to control encryption keys directly, including the ability to rotate or revoke access. These controls ensure data remains protected, segregated, and compliant with enterprise security requirements. |
| Retention schedules are applied automatically based on classification, policy rules, and regulatory requirements. As data is ingested, retention policies are assigned and enforced without manual intervention. Legal holds can be applied to override disposition and preserve relevant records for investigations, audits, or litigation. All actions are logged, providing a complete audit trail of retention decisions and hold activity. This ensures records are retained for the correct duration and managed defensibly throughout their lifecycle. |
Retain Communications with Defensible, Policy-Driven Control
Understand how retention and disposition policies are applied consistently across communications using a unified data foundation.
