The Hidden Dangers of PST Files

The increasing importance of being able to search, retain, and retrieve enterprise e-mail is being undermined by wrong-headed attempts to treat PST files, also known as personal folders, locally. The ultimate outcome of such practices is that companies create more problems than they solve and unnecessarily put the business at risk. Savvy companies, however, are recognizing the benefits of a central archive and are eliminating their reliance on PST files altogether.

When it comes right down to it PST files are a bad idea. A mission-critical application, e-mail commonly contains a wide range of vital corporate data such as personal data, customer data, product plans, marketing plans, corporate financial data, intellectual property, etc. Therefore, robust management of these files is essential.

In a nutshell, PST files were not designed for the enterprise class workout they’re getting. And policies that minimize the importance of PST files, and the resulting impact on the business of not dealing with them properly, can be severe.

The Problem
In an attempt to better manage growing volumes of e-mail, administrators and/or users do one or more of the following to move subsets of their mailbox data out of the e-mail system and onto other storage devices: data is moved into a PST file, which can be stored on a file server; stored on a hard drive that resides on a users desktop or laptop computer; is burned to CDs or DVDs; or is moved to a portable storage device such as a USB drive.

These actions exemplify good intentions gone wrong. There are many costs and risks associated with this type of PST file management that pertain to storage, legal discovery, and administration.

One the first problems created when e-mail from Exchange is moved into PST files for retention is that companies drive archiving underground. In this case, underground means out of sight. Companies are in the dark about how many files exist and what information is contained in the files. Is it precious intellectual property?

PST file archives have other problems as well. For starters, this practice puts records into disparate silos or folder files making it difficult for IT to store, find, and manage. There’s also a propensity for data corruption with limited recovery capability that ultimately results in permanent data loss.

An all-too-common scenario for dealing with corrupt PST files is that users call on IT support to save the file. Tech support resources cost companies time and money whether it’s to rebuild a corrupted file or go to the organization’s tape backup to retrieve a file, if possible.

From a storage perspective, PST files break apart the notion of single instancing. For example, if a group of employees are copied on the same e-mail that has a PowerPoint attachment and archive to PST, the company ends up saving a lot of redundant data. This not only eats up precious storage resources but also drives up storage costs.

There's also a negative impact on nightly backups, as the archive bit for any opened file will be changed, and thus require a complete file backup even if the file has only been viewed.

Both underground archiving and search limitations around PST files, mentioned earlier, have a serious impact on legal discovery and compliance. The spotlight on e-mail as the core of litigation should have every company worried about PST files in the organization.

When it comes to e-discovery, information contained in PST files falls under compliance management as does e-mail on an Exchange server. Underground archiving may cause a company to miss e-mail discovery during a search and puts the organization at risk. Organizations also may also increase legal liability due to the limited ability to search PST files; a user can only search one PST file at a time, making it almost impossible for an organization to locate and search all PST files for compliance and/or discovery.

The bottom line is that PST files add to the risk, cost, and burden of litigation discovery. The manually intensive process of sifting through e-mails to identify for legal holds takes both time and money, and given the ad-hoc nature of PST files this creates pockets of unchecked data.

At the same time, from an administrative viewpoint, PST files keep organizations from safely identifying and destroying documents that no longer need to be kept for legal or business reasons. PST files stored on local hard drives or removable storage media are difficult to administer. For example, a laptop that is lost or stolen can compromise an organization resulting in both tactical damages as well as brand damages.

Change Something
There is a solution to the menace, liability, and risk that PSTs impose on the enterprise: migrate or eradicate PST files into a central archiving repository. Businesses can use Symantec’s Enterprise Vault tools, for example, to conquer locally stored PST files and historical data.

For the long-term management of e-mail archives the vendor offers a multi-step process:

• Locate PST files by searching the network to look for the PST file extension and crawl files on laptop devices.
• Once files are found, information can be collected into a central location.
• Once in the archive, files can be indexed and ownership reassigned. This enables users to access the files and go back and delete any copies off of other data stores.

To fully control and manage corporate information, businesses need to review the usage and risks of PSTs, define a policy regarding existing and future use of PSTs and implement that policy. Given the all the dangers of PSTs, the best policy is to locate, eradicate, and prevent PST files in the organization.