Email archive of record
Purview plus MxVault — the four-state answer to email retention.
For FSCA-regulated, JSE-listed, and records-retention-bound organisations — and the M365 teams who advise them. MxVault is a tamper-proof, journal-based email archive on an independent hyperscaler. Complementary to Microsoft Purview, not a competitor.
Three ways email records fail you
Each one is a real risk on our register. Each has a production-level audit rule behind it. Most organisations have only thought about one of the three.
You can’t find it
Records of legal or regulatory significance go missing — deleted, aged out past their statutory floor, or tampered with before you knew you needed them. An archive you can’t defend as unmodified has no evidentiary value. This is the risk behind ISO 27001 control A.5.33 (Protection of Records).
A.5.33 · integrity · availabilityYou can’t produce it in time
The records exist, but your production workflow misses the 30-day subpoena deadline, the regulator’s tighter window, or the legal-hold mid-matter. Inability to produce in time is equivalent to non-production — courts call it adverse inference.
FRCP 37(e) · adverse inferenceIt’s on the same vendor as your mail
Your archive-of-record lives inside the same hyperscaler as your production email. A vendor outage, security incident, policy change, or jurisdictional event hits both simultaneously — and several regulators explicitly treat that as a material control gap.
FSCA · SEC 17a-4 · FCA · MiFID IIWhich quadrant are you in?
Two yes/no questions — do you run Microsoft Purview Records Management, and do you run MxVault? The answer puts you in one of four states. Find yours, then decide whether to move.
No archive
Gap. No journal-based archive of record.
- A.5.33 records protection at risk
- Jurisdiction retention floors unsatisfied
- No tamper-evidence, no legal-hold path, no auditor-access path
Single-vendor
Covered within Microsoft. Compliant — but concentrated.
- Purview Records Management handles retention and legal hold
- Archive and live mail share one hyperscaler and one vendor
- FSCA, SEC 17a-4, FCA, and MiFID II read this as a concentration risk
Separated
Covered externally. Records obligations met on an independent hyperscaler.
- WORM archive, per-message hashing, unlimited legal hold
- No classification or DLP — Purview (or equivalent) still required for A.5.12 and A.8.10
- Strong posture for regulated sectors; incomplete posture for data protection
Defence in depth
Purview and MxVault together. Division of responsibility, documented.
- Purview — live classification, DLP, eDiscovery, litigation hold on live mailboxes
- MxVault — tamper-evident archive of record on an independent hyperscaler
- The posture regulators prefer, and auditors understand once it’s documented
Better together — separation of concerns
Purview and MxVault do different jobs. Treating them as alternatives is the mistake. Run both, draw the line between them, and your ISMS gets cleaner, not more complicated.
Purview does
- Sensitivity labels and classification
- Data loss prevention on live mail
- eDiscovery Premium and litigation hold
- Information Protection and Insider Risk
MxVault does
- Journal capture of every inbound and outbound message
- WORM storage with per-message SHA-256 hashing
- Unlimited legal hold, independent of retention duration
- Archive-of-record on an independent hyperscaler
Together
- Live controls on live mail (Purview) plus preserved evidence (MxVault)
- Vendor separation between mail system and archive of record
- Clear division of responsibility documented in your ISMS
- The posture regulators in concentrated-risk sectors expect to see
Retention by jurisdiction
We engineer MxVault to the statutory floor of your jurisdiction. Our default is seven years — the South African floor. We extend it per contract for the EU, UK, US, UAE, and KSA where statutes demand more, and sector overlays push the bar higher still.
South Africa Statutory floor: 7 years POPIA
Retention drivers
- 7 yr Commercial Companies Act 71 of 2008 § 24
- 5 yr Tax Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011 § 29; VAT Act 89 of 1991
- 3 yr Labour BCEA 1997 §§ 29, 31
Sector overlays
Prescription Act 68 of 1969 — 3y debts, 30y judgments. Information Regulator active since 2021; fines up to ZAR 10m.
Europe Statutory floor: 10 years GDPR
Retention drivers
- 10 yr Commercial Member-state commercial codes (DE HGB § 257 — 10y; FR Code de commerce L123-22 — 10y; NL Burgerlijk Wetboek — 7y; typical 7–10y)
- 10 yr Tax Member-state fiscal codes (DE AO § 147 — 10y; FR LPF L102B — 6y; IT DPR 600/1973 — 10y; typical 6–10y)
- 5 yr Labour Varies 2–10y; pension-basis data typically 10+y
Sector overlays
Retention is set by member-state law — EU-wide layer is the GDPR ceiling only. Member-state floors range DE/FR 10y to NL 7y.
UK Statutory floor: 6 years UK GDPR + Data Protection Act 2018
Retention drivers
- 6 yr Commercial Companies Act 2006 § 388 (3y private co accounting; 6y plc); 10y for resolutions; Limitation Act 1980 § 5 — 6y simple contract
- 6 yr Tax Taxes Management Act 1970 § 12B; Finance Act 1998 Sch 18 para 21; VAT Act 1994 (HMRC Notice 700/21) — 6y; 20y for fraud/negligence
- 6 yr Labour Working Time Regs 1998 reg 9, NMWA 1998, ERA 1996 — typical 2–6y; pensions often 6+y
Sector overlays
Limitation Act 1980 6y simple contract / 12y deed drives practical floor for commercial correspondence. EU adequacy decision in force but periodic review.
United States Statutory floor: 7 years None federal; state comprehensive privacy laws
Retention drivers
- 7 yr Tax IRC § 6501 — 3y general, 6y >25% understatement, 7y bad debt, indefinite for fraud; employment tax 4y
- 3 yr Labour FLSA 3y payroll, ADEA 3y, ERISA 6y, OSHA 5y (30y exposure), I-9 3y
Sector overlays
FRCP Rule 37(e) — litigation-hold duty once litigation reasonably anticipated overrides any schedule. No federal GDPR-equivalent; state laws patchwork.
UAE Statutory floor: 7 years Federal PDPL
Retention drivers
- 5 yr Commercial CCL 32/2021 Art 26 — 5y onshore general accounting
- 7 yr Tax Federal Decree-Law 47/2022 — Corporate Tax (effective 2023) 7y; Federal Decree-Law 8/2017 — VAT 5y general, 15y real-estate
- 2 yr Labour Federal Decree-Law 33/2021 — 2y post-termination onshore; DIFC/ADGM 6y typical
Sector overlays
Three coexisting regimes — onshore (mainland), DIFC, ADGM. PDPL enforceable from early 2023 with fines up to AED 5m per violation. Corporate Tax 7y floor is post-2023.
Saudi Arabia Statutory floor: 10 years PDPL
Retention drivers
- 10 yr Commercial Law of Commercial Books 1409H; Companies Law 2022 — 10y commercial books/accounting/contracts/corporate governance
- 10 yr Tax ZATCA — Zakat and Corporate Income Tax 10y; VAT general 6y, 11y real estate, ~15y for capital assets (asset life + 5y)
- 10 yr Labour Saudi Labor Law (Royal Decree M/51 of 2005, amended 2021) — no explicit number; 10y practice aligned with commercial baseline
Sector overlays
Saudi baseline is 10y where UAE onshore is 5y. PDPL fines up to SAR 5m per violation, doubled for repeat. In-Kingdom data localisation and Arabic-language requirements for ZATCA/MOC audits.
Statutory floor — not legal advice. Confirm with your counsel before contracting. Litigation holds override retention for any matter where preservation is ordered.
We don’t claim integrity. We prove it.
An archive you can’t defend is worse than no archive — it gives you false confidence. Here is how we prove MxVault to your auditor, before the audit starts.
- Vendor attestations. SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 attestations published by Cryoserver at the Cryoserver trust centre. We hold a current copy on file for your auditor on request.
- Our own tests. Global Micro runs a quarterly legal-hold test and an annual auditor-access test on MxVault — recorded in our ISMS evidence archive. Your auditor sees the test logs, not a marketing claim.
- Per-message integrity. Every ingested message is SHA-256 hashed and written to WORM storage. The index is tamper-evident; a modified message breaks the hash chain and surfaces as a reconciliation failure.
How it integrates — zero user impact
Users see nothing. Admins configure one journal rule. After that, the archive runs itself.
- Exchange Online journal rule — a single transport rule captures every inbound and outbound message at source, before any user-level retention policy applies.
- SMTP ingest to MxVault — journalled messages flow to MxVault on an independent hyperscaler, completely separate from your Microsoft 365 tenant.
- Hashed, written, indexed — each message is SHA-256 hashed, written once to WORM storage, and indexed for sub-second search by sender, recipient, date, subject, and content.
FAQ
Does MxVault replace Microsoft Purview?
No. Purview classifies your data, enforces DLP on live mail, and powers live eDiscovery. MxVault is the tamper-evident archive of record on an independent hyperscaler. They solve different problems and most of our regulated-sector customers run both. The four-state matrix above is the mental model — we recommend State D for any organisation a regulator watches.
Does MxVault replace my backup?
No. Per-workload backup (AvePoint, Acronis, Veeam) protects mailbox, SharePoint, and Teams recoverability against operational loss. MxVault is a journal-based archive-of-record channel — a completely different control objective, evaluated separately under A.8.13 Information Backup in our ISMS.
What about email from before we signed up?
Historical mailbox import is scoped per-tenant during onboarding. We pull the archive of whichever mailboxes you nominate, ingest them into MxVault with original timestamps preserved, and hash each message on the way in so the historical corpus benefits from the same tamper-evidence as new mail.
Which hyperscaler does MxVault run on?
An independent hyperscaler, distinct from Microsoft 365 — chosen per customer to match data-sovereignty posture. We confirm the specific region during contracting so your auditor and your records policy can reference it exactly.
Is seven years enough?
Seven years is the South African statutory floor and our contracted default. For EU jurisdictions with ten-year retention, SEC 17a-4 broker-dealers, SAMA-regulated banks, or any sector with longer obligations, we extend retention per contract. Retention duration and legal-hold duration are independent — a legal hold runs as long as the matter demands, not bounded by retention.
See your exact compliance posture
A GMS compliance audit walks your tenant against the four-state model, shows you where you are today, and costs the move to State D if that’s what your regulator expects. Free, no tenant access required.
Start your audit preview