Electronic communication is creating headaches for IT workers and company officials who must decide what to keep and what to purge. The government is putting pressure on companies by increasing legal and regulatory controls over email record-keeping.

Emails can be the business records of a company. A company needs to have a consistent policy regarding email, easy-to-maintain software, and training for all employees on deciding what to toss.

Software programs exist that store and retrieve important email and permanently delete the junk. There is increasing interest in these kinds of programs with the current climate of legislation and fines. What most employees don’t realize is that simply deleting a message does not remove it from the computer. It takes special software to delete data by overwriting it on the hard drive.

Instant messaging will be the next wave of compliance, a tool that some companies already ban.