Envelope Journaling

Journaling Messages to Global Relay's Message Archiver

Journaling provides the ability to record all communication by forwarding a copy of all incoming, internal and outgoing email to a specified email address in real-time over the Internet using a secure connection (TLS/SSL). Journaling is commonly implemented by firms to address compliance, litigation, monitoring, business continuity and disaster recovery issues. Archiving from journaling reduces the strain and liability of storing data by backing it up, removing it from its native environment, and storing it in a secure, geographically separate location.

Email Envelopes Explained

An email envelope, similar to a postal envelope, contains the addresses of the recipients it will be delivered to. Unlike a postal envelope, it may contain multiple recipients categorized as To, Cc & Bcc. The later, Bcc or "blind carbon copy" recipients are addresses that are not seen by the To or Cc recipients when opened in a application such as Outlook or Thunderbird. Characteristic of any email application, you can fill in a Bcc recipient when creating a message; however, you do not have a Bcc field when viewing a message. Messages that are Bcc'd to you simply appear in your application with the sender and other To and Cc recipients; however, your email address is not shown anywhere in the message header. An email is placed into an envelope when sent and removed from an envelope by the receiving mail server prior to delivery to the application. To ensure the true recipients of a message are captured, the messages must be captured by the mail server as it passes through the Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) a key component of all mail servers such as Exchange, SendMail, QMail, Postfix & Exim. Capturing messages at the MTA also ensures that all incoming, internal and outgoing messages are captured.

A key feature of any email archiving system is the ability for messages to be captured at the MTA. This process is generically referred to as "Envelope Journaling" as opposed to Journaling. This process can be verified by sending a Bcc message to a recipient using a mail archiving system. The messages will be viewable in a Bcc field.

Compliance Archiving & the Importance of Envelope Journaling

Global Relay's compliance archiving and monitoring are specifically engineered to index all data for search and authenticity purposes. All messages are time/date stamped, serialized and written to a dedicated customer WORM drive. An associated audit trail is also logged. This process verifies the authenticity of your email, and ensures that no messages are lost or tampered with. The Message Archiver supports Envelope Journaling for Exchange 2000/2003 Standard using the Global Relay IMAP Downloader, and Exchange 2000/2003 Enterprise with either the IMAP Downloader via the Exchange Connector, which can be configured to "Push" email to the Message Archiver (meaning all messages are forwarded from the firm's Exchange server to Global Relay - Global Relay does not retrieve the messages from the Exchange server). These systems ensure firms will meet SEC/NASD and other message capture requirements.

Exchange Envelope Journaling - How it Works

Setup and provisioning of Microsoft Exchange with the Message Archiver is simple, ensuring security and rock-solid reliability. Exchange manages domains (company.com) within a database know as a "Store". Exchange supports a defined number of Stores. Each Exchange Store can support multiple domains and associated Users.

  1. "Exchange Journaling" is enabled to forward all incoming, internal & outgoing email to Global Relay's Message Archiver.
  2. "Envelope Journaling" is then configured for an Exchange Store to forward all email domains in the Store to the Message Archiver via a secure TLS connection with Username and password authentication. Envelope Journaling is required to ensure all mail header information is archived with each email.
  3. The Message Archiver opens the Envelope, analyzes the header and routes the email to the appropriate Customer Archive, with full support for BCC, STMP Mail FROM and distribution list email.
  4. Each Customer Archive can unify multiple domains, domain aliases, instant messaging (IM) and import legacy email with no message size limitations.
  5. Imported legacy email may be added to the Customers Archive via PST, MBox & MDir file formats. Simply write the data to DVD or other acceptable media and deliver it to Global Relay for import.
  6. The Message Archiver supports unlimited domains and Customers. Once Envelope Journaling is configured, email for any new domain added to the Exchange Store will be automatically forwarded to the Message Archiver.
  7. Domains forwarded to the Message Archiver which do not have an associated Customer Archive will be held in quarantine with that Stores' Exchange administrator being notified.
  8. In the event of a network outage, Exchange will queue email internally until the network connection is available.
  9. Please refer to Global Relay's "Exchange Envelope Journaling How-To" documents for detailed configuration instructions (Global Relay SMTP Connector & IMAP Downloader)

Exchange 2000/2003 Standard (Small Business Server)

Exchange Standard servers can be configured to support Envelope Journaling. However, messages MUST be downloaded from the server with "Pull" technology. In contrast, Exchange Standard "Push" technology using the Exchange Connector, also known as "message forwarding" will discard the envelope resulting in the loss of Bcc/DL recipients causing non-compliant message capture.

Exchange 2000/2003 Enterprise

Exchange Enterprise servers can be configured to support Envelope Journaling using both "Push" technology, such as an IMAP downloader, or "Pull" technology via the Exchange Connector. However, an archiving system must support the proper capture and indexing of a message envelope preserving the Bcc/DL recipients.

PSTs & Bcc/DL mail

If PST files are burned to CD used as part of the compliance storage systems, you must ensure messages contain an envelope Journaled message which will appear as an attachment to the message. Otherwise, the messages are not preserving the Bcc/DL recipients and therefore can not be proven authentic.