Pursuant to a settlement reached between the National Security Archive and the White House Executive Office of the President (EOP), the White House today issued a letter describing critical aspects of the EOP unclassified network e-mail preservation and archiving system now used in the White House. Among other specifics, the letter describes:

• Automated capture and preservation of all e-mail and Blackberry messages sent or received on the EOP’s unclassified network;
• Documents segregated into component-specific repositories and broad search capabilities that improve the ability to find e-mail records in response to legal or administrative needs;
• Blocking of access to personal and external Web-based e-mail systems from White House unclassified workstations;
• Controls against unauthorized deletion of e-mails and an accounting of any deleted e-mails;
• Systematic emergency recovery backups of the system; and
• Automatically generated audit reports and system health-check dashboard reports to assist in the identification of problems.

“The system automatically addresses the critical components of capture, backup, and preservation – all of which were missing in the prior system,” explained Al Lakhani, Managing Director at Alvrez & Marsal Dispute Analysis and Forensic Services, who acted as the Archive’s technical expert during the litigation.
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