Exchange storage cost has been a hot topic of discussion over last many years in IT community. Often times, IT administrators report the size of Exchange storage growing abnormally. Microsoft introduced Single Instance Storage (SIS) in version 4.0 to de-duplicate data and reduce the storage requirement, but later dropped it in version 2010. This in effect increased the storage by 20% to 50% when enterprises migrated to Exchange 2010.
Meanwhile, Microsoft also introduced more efficient methods of compressing the data and improving the indexing in order to improve Outlook client responsiveness. But the problems persist:
- Perpetually (and abnormally) increasing cost of storage
- Increase in size of mailboxes (and PST files)
- Slowness in Outlook client
During our conversations with IT Managers and CIOs we get an overwhelming response when we speak about integration of Vaultize with Outlook (though a Plug-in) that not only solves the three problems above but also helps in controlling file sharing and mitigating the risk of potential data loss through policy-based enforcement of enterprise digital rights management (DRM aka information rights management/IRM).
Here is how this works:
- Vaultize Outlook Plug-in converts email attachments to secure links (URLs). The conversion can be policy-based (enforced by IT) or can be manual. The policy can be based on various parameters like attachment size, attachment type, recipients and so on. The policies can be applied at the organization level, group level or on individual users.
- The attachments are stored on the Vaultize Server (or Cloud – depending on the deployment option) fully de-duplicated and encrypted using patent-pending Vault KNOX technology. This effectively means that the attachments, which otherwise consume significant storage on Exchange as well as PST, are now just replaced by a URL of a few bytes. The de-duplication is content-aware and fine-grained. In many deployments we have seen the de-duplication factor of 10x (i.e. 90% reduction in storage). And, remember, this (reduced) storage is not Exchange storage (or PST storage) but on Vaultize Server/Cloud.
- A security-conscious IT can also define digital rights management policies to restrict the access of shared documents based on DRM parameters even after recipients have downloaded them. The access to shared documents can also be restricted to Vaultize’s web-based online document viewer (with additional ability to embed digital watermarks). Thus, security always travels with shared documents as they move across endpoints, across networks and across users (including with recipients outside the organization). This effectively means that a file always travels within a security envelope that can only be opened by authorized users, from an authorized device and from authorized locations based on access rights defined by the corporate IT and the owner of the file. The document owner (and the corporate IT) is able to control the use of shared documents and manage (and even revoke) the permissions to open, view, download, print, copy-paste, forward and edit those documents. The enterprise file security solution is expected to protect the documents even after they are downloaded by the recipient on a device not under control of the company IT.
Vaultize Outlook Plug-in not only reduces cost of Exchange Storage but also helps end-users be more productive through increased responsiveness of Outlook client – everything with built-in enterprise digital rights management providing end-to-end enterprise file security.
Additionally, Vaultize can help you get rid of traditional unsecure means of file sharing and be an FTP alternative and also mitigate the security risks from your end-users using consumer file sync & share solution like Dropbox. You not only can replace your FTP servers but also create Virtual Data Rooms (VDR) to store, distribute and track sensitive data.
See Vaultize Enterprise File Security Platform live at upcoming Gartner Security and Risk Management Summit.
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