What Is the Best IT Compliance Tool for UK SMBs? Why Google Vault is Essential
With more transactions taking place electronically, businesses need a way to keep track of their communications to help in the event of a dispute. In the past, you could grab the necessary paperwork from your filing cabinet, and the case could be resolved.
But now that we rely on email for buyer-seller discussions, there are a couple of problems. Not least the ease with which emails and documents can be deleted. With the relevant message gone, how can you prove which party is correct?
For instance, some industries, such as legal, healthcare, and finance, require businesses to keep highly accurate records of all their dealings. Losing and deleting creates a compliance problem with serious legal and financial ramifications. For example, HMRC recommends keeping business records for at least 6 years. If you lose this data and HMRC needs it, you may find your business in trouble.
The £250,000 "Safety Net" Case Study
We once worked with a client who faced a potential £250,000 lawsuit over a contract dispute. The other party claimed certain terms were never agreed upon. Because our client had Google Vault active, we were able to perform an "e-discovery" search across their entire history. Within minutes, we recovered the exact email chain proving the terms were agreed upon. The lawsuit was dropped instantly.
Keeping email and document archives indefinitely is costly in terms of the physical storage required and the administrative overhead of running those systems. But for Google Workspace by Kimbley IT clients, there is a simple solution: Google Vault. Unlike many other eDiscovery solutions, Google Vault has no additional charge or license for those on the correct Workspace plans.
What does Google Vault do?
At the most basic level, Google Vault allows you to securely retain email messages and documents for your chosen period. These messages are easily searchable and accessible, so you can refer to them whenever needed.
Google Vault is ideal for situations where a member of your team leaves. Rather than keeping their mailbox open (a security risk), you can refer to the copies stored in Google Vault whenever you want. All the data retained in Google Vault is easily searchable, making it quick and easy to work through your archives. In addition to email, Google Vault can retain your Google Drive, Groups, Chat, Meet, Sites, Voice and Calendar data, ensuring every communications channel is archived and discoverable.
Top Reasons to Choose Google Vault for IT Compliance
Google Vault has been designed specifically to assist with strict compliance frameworks. It provides three primary advantages for UK start-ups and SMBs:
Automatic Indexing: Every email your team members send or receive and every file they create or save is automatically indexed and audited in Vault.
Immutable Audit Trails: This creates a tamper-proof record that is updated every time the data is accessed. You have a complete record of who did what with the data. This is exactly the information your auditors, the ICO, or legal representation will seek.
Alignment with Cyber Essentials: If you are working towards Cyber Essentials certification, this level of auditing is a major step toward meeting your data protection requirements.
Making things easier for you
Google Vault uses intelligent rules to simplify the archiving process. From retaining the data in your team members’ mailboxes and Google Shared Drives to defining how long the data is kept, Vault uses automation to make your job easier. By applying retention rules, you can also automatically delete information that no longer needs to be held, helping you meet the "Storage Limitation" principle of GDPR.
The ability to archive data and record how it is used should interest any business, not just those bound by complex compliance rules. Data is your most valuable asset, so it should be protected as such. If your business currently has zero or limited data archiving, you must check that you are meeting the data retention requirements of your industry and local laws.
If legal action were taken towards your business, you should be confident that you could find all the data related to the legal request in a cost and time-efficient manner. If you’re not confident you could do this, your legal costs may go through the roof.
If you'd like an expert to help you implement this and secure your business data, the next step is to book a video call with us using the form below.
