Appendix E: Data Retention Policy

Introduction

The Data Retention Policy describes how long Harmony Email & Collaboration stores emails from Microsoft 365 or Gmail in its database. You can search and view emails stored in the database using Mail Explorer and Custom Queries.

Default Retention Period of Emails

By default, Harmony Email & Collaboration retains the emails as follows:

Verdict and Enforcement

Raw Email

(Original email with attachments)

Email Meta Data

(Attributes and data detected from the security scan)

Clean emails

(Includes emails with re-written links in the email body)

14 days

14 days

Emails with modified attachments and emails that have cleaned (sanitized) attachments, removed as password-protected attachments, and re-written links

14 days

180 days

Emails containing threats but not quarantined

(includes emails with phishing /spam / malware / DLP detection that are not quarantined)

14 days

180 days

Quarantined emails

(includes manually quarantined emails)

180 days

180 days

Emails quarantined by Microsoft

180 days

180 days

Harmony Email & Collaboration retains security events for 12 months. For more information, see Retention of Security Events.

For information about the procedure to customize the retention period, see Customizing Retention Period of Emails.

Note - Harmony Email & Collaboration keeps backend logs on emails for seven days after the email is delivered.

Available Actions on Emails During and After the Retention Period

Actions you can perform after you open an email:

Email Type

Period

Actions

Clean Email

During the retention period

  • Quarantine Email

  • Show header from raw email

  • Show body from raw email

  • Download this email

  • Report mis-classification

After the retention period

Email is not available.

Detected but non-quarantined email

During the retention period

  • Quarantine Email

  • Show header from raw email

  • Show body from raw email

  • Download this email

  • Send original email

  • Report mis-classification

After the retention period (Configured retention period - 180 days)
  • Quarantine Email

  • Show header from raw email

  • Show body from raw email

  • Report mis-classification

After 180 days

Email is not available.

Quarantined email

During the retention period

  • Restore Email

  • Show header from raw email

  • Show body from raw email

  • Download this email

  • Report mis-classification

After the retention period

Email is not available.

Data Retention Policy for Non-email Applications

The data retention policy for non-email applications is applicable for:

  • Office 365 Sharepoint

  • Office 365 OneDrive

  • Microsoft Teams

  • Google Drive

  • Slack

  • Dropbox

  • Box

Notes:

  • Metadata for both clean and malicious items (messages, shared files) is saved for 6 months.

  • The data (files / messages) is stored for 24 hours.

  • Quarantined items are saved for 6 months.