Archiving 101

Late last year, Massachusetts state senator Dianne Wilkerson was arrested by the FBI for allegedly accepting $23,500 in bribes to help obtain a liquor license for a night club in Roxbury. Two days ago, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's office was ordered by Massachusetts state authorities to secure all computers in city hall after it was discovered that one of the mayor's aides may have destroyed critical email evidence in the Wilkerson case. The city has blamed the deletion of email on a "glitch". You can read more about the story here.

Four lessons to be learned from this incident:

• You need to preserve business records.
• Even if they are stored in email.
• You should deploy an email archiving system.
• 'My dog ate my email' is not an excuse.