Microsoft 365 top tips – Litigation Hold

Every organisation in the world has problems, but sometimes these problems end up being quite severe and can mean legal ramifications for your business – either in the form of your company being sued by an individual, or vice versa with you being forced to sue the individual. If emails are deleted from that person’s account this could have a severe effect on legal proceedings. However, any communication needs to be approached with caution as this can be a sensitive subject. In order to keep the peace, it is often advisable to keep them unaware that this matter is of concern to you.

Microsoft’s ‘Litigation Hold’ feature makes it possible to fail safe all deleted emails from that account so nothing is lost that could be beneficial at a later date. The user can continue to delete their emails at their own will, but they won’t – actually be deleted – this can be set up either with their knowledge or incognito.

Litigation Hold

‘Litigation Hold’ essentially means nothing is ever deleted from your mailbox. It allows everything that is deleted to be recovered, making it possible for a particular document deleted by accident – or deliberately – to be recovered.

As much as Litigation Hold is mainly used by law firms to ensure the protection of highly sensitive information, it can be used in any business to ensure security and peace of mind.

Let us take a look at Litigation Hold and discover how to set one up to ensure you have a backup should any important emails be deleted.

Litigation Hold – how to

1. Within Outlook, click on ‘admin’, and you will then be taken to the admin centre. From here click ‘Edit a user’.
2. Once having picked your user, allow it to populate and scroll down to ‘mail settings’.
3. Scroll down to where it says ‘Litigation Hold’. It will be set to ‘off’ so click ‘edit’ and turn Litigation Hold ‘on’.
4. Once turned on there is a duration option available – set how long you want the Litigation Hold to be active for or you can just leave it blank if you don’t want a set time limit.

You will then be given the option to leave a note to notify the user whose email it is that there is a Litigation Hold on their account. You can also redirect them to a webpage if you wish. Then click ‘save’. Your Litigation Hold is now active for the duration of the allotted time you chose.

The only potential problem is that it can take up to 60 minutes for the hold to take effect, meaning  the user can delete anything for potentially the next 60 minutes if they see fit, and they will not be saved. You should bear this fact in mind as it may be important depending on the urgency of the situation.

But Microsoft have also thought of a solution for this problem – they keep emails for 30 days as part of their normal process so, even if a user does try to purge their system, the data will still be available to you.

This isn’t something anyone wants to believe may happen to them but being prepared for such an eventuality is essential and it can be invaluable to have a tool like this in your armoury.

The tech specialists – 4TC

Litigation Hold allows you to be certain that you have a backup no matter the circumstances. Our team of specialists take time to understand the daily challenges that your business faces, in order to then provide cost-effective tech solutions to these challenges that will help you save time, protect vital data and be more effective with your time management, be that through the use of Litigation Hold or other means. In the modern world it is essential that you and your team use IT to its full potential, as doing so guarantees you the best chance of growth going forward. If you would like to find out more on how 4TC Services can provide affordable tech management to your business, drop us an email or call us now for a full demonstration.