Archiving of corporate correspondence in Russian companies. Is the legal address reliable? How much are company shares worth?
What is email? In the modern business world this is:
- Your face. It is with the help of email that you can create a positive image in the eyes of the counterparty or spoil the first impression.
- Your working tool. A lot of communication with the outside world takes place via email. Therefore, if you are proficient in this instrument, you can make your life a lot easier.
- A powerful distraction. External world trying to harass you, distract you and lead you astray via email.
From this perspective, let’s look at working with email. Let's start with something simple.
Formatting a letter
I use an email client Mozilla Thunderbird, so I will tell you using his example. Let's create a new letter and go from top to bottom through the list of fields.
To whom. Copy. Hidden copy
Some may not know, but "To" in Mozilla can be changed to "Cc" or "Bcc".
- To whom: we write the main recipient or several recipients separated by a semicolon.
- Copy: we write to someone who should read the letter, but from whom we do not expect a reaction.
- Hidden copy: we are writing to someone who should read the letter, but should remain unknown to the other recipients of the letter. It is especially appropriate to use for mass mailing of business letters, such as notifications.
Wrong in mass mailings, indicate recipients using the “Copy” or “To” fields. Several times a year I receive letters that list 50–90 recipients in the “Cc” field. There is a violation of privacy. Not all of your recipients need to know who else you are working with on a similar topic. It’s good if these are people who know each other. What if there are competing companies on the list that don’t know about each other? At a minimum, you need to be prepared for unnecessary explanations, and at maximum, to terminate cooperation with one of them. Do not do it this way.
Letter subject
The importance of the subject line is often written (sometimes sensibly) on corporate blogs. professional services newsletters. But most often we are talking about sales letters, where the subject of the letter solves the problem “the email should be opened.”
We are discussing daily business correspondence. Here the theme solves the problem “the letter and its author should be easily identified and then found.” Moreover, your diligence will return to you in the form of karma of numerous response letters, only with prefixes Re: or FWD, among which you will have to look for the desired letter on the topic.
Twenty letters is the volume of one-day correspondence for a middle manager. I’m not talking about entrepreneurs and business owners at all; their number of letters sometimes goes off scale at 200 or more per day. Therefore once again: do not send emails with an empty subject.
So, how to formulate the subject line of an email correctly?
Mistake #1 : Only the company name in the subject. For example, “Sky” and that’s it. Firstly, you are probably not the only one from your company communicating with this counterparty. Secondly, such a topic does not bring any meaning, because the name of your company is already visible from the address. Third, guess what yours will look like own box with this approach to correspondence? Something like this.
Is it convenient to search on such topics?
Mistake #2 : flashy, selling headline. It's great if you know how to write such headlines. But is it appropriate to use these skills in business correspondence? Remember the purpose of a business email subject line: not to sell, but to provide identification and search.
Text of the letter
There are many writing guides for different occasions. For example, Maxim Ilyakhov, Alexander Amzin and other masters of words have a lot of useful information. I advise you to read their articles, at least to improve general literacy and improve the overall style of written speech.
In the process of writing a letter, we must make several decisions sequentially.
A matter of politeness . At the beginning of the letter, you can blur into pleasantries or even tenderness in the spirit of “My dear Rodya, it’s been more than two months since I talked to you in writing, from which I myself suffered and even didn’t sleep some nights, thinking.” Very polite and very costly, both in terms of time to write such an introduction, and in terms of the interlocutor’s time to read it. Correspondence is business, remember? Not an essay in the epistolary genre for a competition or a letter to Raskolnikov’s mother, but business correspondence.
We respect our time and the recipient's!
It only makes sense to introduce yourself and recall the circumstances of your acquaintance in the first letter sent after a fleeting meeting at an exhibition. If this is a continuation of cooperation or ongoing correspondence, in the first letter of the day we write: “Hello, Ivan”, in the second and subsequent ones: “Ivan, ...”.
Appeal . I have always been concerned about the question of who to address in a letter if there are several recipients. Recently I wrote a letter addressed to three girls named Anna. Without any doubt, I wrote “Hello, Anna” and didn’t worry. But such luck is not always the case.
What if there are three or even seven recipients and they do not have the same name? You can list them by name: “Good afternoon, Rodion, Pulcheria, Avdotya and Pyotr Petrovich.” But it's long and takes time. You can write: “Hello, colleagues!”
For myself, I use the rule of addressing by name the person in the “To” field. And don’t contact those in the copy at all. This rule also allows you to more accurately determine (one!) the addressee of the letter and the purpose of this letter.
Citation . Often correspondence is a chain of letters with questions and answers - in a word, a dialogue. It is considered good practice not to delete the correspondence history and write your response at the top of the quoted text, so that when you return to this correspondence a week later, you can easily read the dialogue from top to bottom, descending by date.
For some reason, the default setting in Mozilla is “Place cursor after quoted text.” I recommend changing it in the “Tools” → “Account Options” → “Composing and Addressing” menu. It must be so.
Purpose of the letter . Business letters there are two types:
- when we simply inform the interlocutor (for example, a report on the work done for the month);
- and when we want something from the interlocutor. For example, so that he approves the attached invoice for payment.
As a rule, there are many times more encouraging letters than reporting letters. If we want to achieve something from the interlocutor, it is very important to say this in a letter in plain text. The call to action should be accompanied by a name and be the last sentence in the letter.
Wrong : “Porfiry Petrovich, I know who hacked the old woman to death.”
Right : “Porfiry Petrovich, it was I who hacked the old woman to death, please take measures to arrest me, I’m tired of suffering!”
Why should the correspondent think for you what to do with this letter? After all, he may make the wrong decision.
Signature in the text . She must be. Moreover, all email clients allow you to configure automatic signature substitution, for example the classic “Sincerely, …”. In Mozilla, this is done in the “Tools” → “Account Options” menu.
Whether or not to write contacts in the signature is a personal matter for everyone. But if you are in any way connected with sales, be sure to write. Even if the deal does not take place as a result of communication, in the future you will be easily found using the contacts from the signature.
Finally, one more feature of the letter body for those interlocutors who don’t like (can’t, don’t want, don’t have time) to answer your letters. Please indicate the default in the body of the letter. For example, “Porfiry Petrovich, if you don’t come to arrest me before 12:00 Friday, then I consider myself amnestied.” Of course, the deadline must be real (you shouldn’t send the text from the example on Friday at 11:50). The recipient must be physically able to read and act on your letter. Such “silence” relieves you of responsibility for the interlocutor’s failure to respond. As always, you need to approach the use of this feature wisely. If a person responds to your letters on time and regularly, such an ultimatum may, if not offend him, then stress him out a little or lead to a decision not to answer the letter right now, but to force you to wait until Friday.
Attachments
Letters often come with attachments: resumes, commercial proposals, estimates, schedules, scans of documents - very handy tool and at the same time a source of popular errors.
Error : huge investment size. I often receive emails with attachments up to 20 MB in size. As a rule, these are scans of some documents in TIFF format, with a resolution of 600dpi. The correspondent's email program will almost certainly freeze for several minutes in a futile attempt to load a preview of the attachment. And God forbid the recipient tries to read this letter on a smartphone...
Personally, I immediately delete such letters. Don't want your email to end up in the trash before it's read? Check the size of the investment. It is recommended that it be no more than 3 MB.
What to do if it exceeds?
- Try reconfiguring your scanner to a different format and resolution. For example, PDF and 300dpi produce quite readable scans.
- Think about programs such as WinRar or 7zip archiver. Some files compress perfectly.
- What to do if the attachment is huge and you can’t compress it? For example, an almost empty accounting database weighs 900 MB. Cloud information storage will come to the rescue: Dropbox, Google Drive and the like. Some services, such as Mail.ru, automatically convert huge attachments into links to cloud storage. But I prefer to manage my information stored in the cloud myself, so I don’t welcome automation from Mail.ru.
And one more not entirely obvious recommendation about investments - their Name . It must be understandable and acceptable to the recipient. Once upon a time we were cooking in company Commercial offer in the name... let it be Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. I received a letter from the manager with a draft CP for approval, and the attachment included a file named “ForFedi.docx”. The manager who sent me this had a dialogue that went something like this:
Dear manager, are you personally ready to approach this respected man and call him Fedya to his face?
Somehow, no, he’s a respected man, everyone calls him by his first name and patronymic.
Why did you name the attachment “For Fedi”? If I send it to him right now, do you think he will buy axes from us using this CP?
I was going to rename it later...
Why prepare a time bomb - refusal potential client- or create extra work for yourself by renaming the file? Why not immediately name the attachment correctly: “For Fyodor Mikhailovich.docx” or even better - “KP_Sky_Axes.docx”.
So, we have more or less sorted out email as a “face”. Let's move on to review Email as a tool for effective work and let's talk about its distracting component.
Working with letters
Email is a powerful distraction. As with any distraction, email needs to be dealt with by tightening rules and introducing work schedules.
At a minimum, you need to turn off ALL notifications about mail arrivals. If the email client is configured by default, you will be notified and sound signal, and they will blink the icon next to the clock and show a preview of the letter. In a word, they will do everything to first tear you away from painstaking work, and then plunge you into the abyss of unread letters and unviewed mailings - minus an hour or two from your life.
Some people have powerful willpower that allows them not to be distracted by notifications, but ordinary people are better off not tempting fate and turning them off. In Mozilla Thunderbird, this is done through the menu "Tools" → "Settings" → "General" → "When new messages appear."
If there are no notifications, how can you understand that a letter has arrived?
Very simple. You yourself, consciously, set aside time to sort through your mail, open your email client and see all the unread messages. This can be done twice a day, for example, at lunch and in the evening, or during forced downtime, for example, in traffic jams.
People often ask, what about response times and urgent letters? I answer: you do not have urgent letters in your mail. Unless you work in the customer support department (this department has its own rules for working with mail).
If there are urgent letters, the sender will notify you about this through other channels - telephone, SMS, Skype. Then you will consciously go into your email client and process urgent mail. All time management gurus (for example, Gleb Arkhangelsky with his “Time Drive”) declare a standard response to email within 24 hours. This is a normal rule good manners- do not expect instant replies via email from your interlocutor. If there is an urgent letter, give more notice fast channels communications.
So, we turned off notifications and now turn on the email client according to our schedule.
What to do when we go to the mail and engage in an activity called “sorting out email”? Where is the beginning and end of this work?
I've heard a lot about the zero inbox system, but, unfortunately, I haven't met a single person using it. I had to reinvent my wheel. There are articles on this topic on Lifehacker. For example, " ". Below I will talk about the zero inbox system in my interpretation. I would be grateful if GTD gurus would comment and add or improve the described system.
It is important to understand and accept that email is not a task scheduler or archive for your activities. Therefore, the Inbox folder should always be empty. Once you start sorting through your inbox, don't stop or be distracted by anything until you've emptied this folder.
What to do with emails in your inbox? You need to go through each letter sequentially and delete it. Yes, just highlight and press Delete on your keyboard. If you can’t bring yourself to delete the letter, you’ll have to decide what to do with it.
- Can you answer it in three minutes? Do I need to answer it? Yes, it is necessary, and the answer will take no more than three minutes, then answer immediately.
- You must answer, but preparing an answer will take more than three minutes. If you use a task scheduler that allows you to convert an email into a task, turn the email into a task and forget about it for a while. For example, I use the absolutely wonderful service Doit.im. It allows you to generate a personal email address: you forward the letter to it, and it turns into a task. But if you don’t have a task scheduler, move the letter to the “0_Run” subfolder.
- After quickly replying to a letter, turning it into a task, or simply reading it, you need to decide what to do with this message next: delete it or send it to one of the folders for long-term storage.
Here are the long-term storage folders I have.
- 0_Execute. I don’t have such a folder, but if you don’t have a planner, I repeat, you can put letters that require detailed work here. This folder also needs to be cleaned regularly, but with a thoughtful approach at a time specially allocated for this.
- 1_Ref. This is where I put letters from background information: welcome letters with logins from various web services, tickets for upcoming flights, and so on.
- 2_Projects. An archive of correspondence on partners and projects with which there are current relationships is stored here. Naturally, a separate folder has been created for each project or partner. In the partner’s folder I put letters not only from his employees, but also letters from Neb employees related to this partner. Very convenient: if necessary, all correspondence on the project is at hand in a couple of clicks.
- 3_Museum. This is where I put those letters that it would be a pity to delete, and the benefit of them is not obvious. Also, folders with closed projects from “2_Projects” migrate here. In short, the “Museum” stores the first candidates for removal.
- 4_Documents. Here are letters with electronic samples of documents that may be useful in the future for accounting, for example, reconciliation reports from clients, tickets for trips taken. The folder has many similarities with the “2_Projects” and “1_Reference” folders, only accounting information is stored in it, and management information is stored in the “2_Projects” folder. In “4_Documents” there is dead information, and in “2_Projects” there is live information.
- 5_Knowledge. Here I only put really useful newsletters that I want to return to after a while for inspiration or to find solutions.
There are other settings mail client, important for the operation of this system. First, by default in Thunderbird there is a “Mark messages as read” checkbox. I prefer to do this consciously, so down with the flag! To do this, go to the menu “Tools” → “Settings” → “Advanced” → “Reading and Display”.
Secondly, we use filters . Previously, I actively used filters that automatically forwarded letters to the appropriate folders based on the sender's address. For example, letters from a lawyer were moved to the “Lawyer” folder. I abandoned this approach for several reasons. First: letters from a lawyer in 99% of cases relate to some project or partner, which means they must be moved to the folder of this partner or project. Second: I decided to add awareness. You yourself must decide where a specific letter should be stored, and it is more convenient to look for unprocessed messages in only one place - in the inbox. Now I use filters only for distributing automatic regular letters from various systems, that is, letters that do not require me to make decisions. Filters in Mozilla Thunderbird are configured in the menu “Tools” → “Message Filters”.
So, with the right approach, email should take from 10 to 60 minutes a day, depending on the volume of correspondence.
Yes, and one more thing. Have you already turned off notifications about the arrival of new letters? ;)
Who would have thought a couple of decades ago that the time would come when it would be possible to contact anyone from anywhere in the world in a couple of seconds? Such a time has come, at the same time giving citizens new opportunities to defend their rights. After all, now SMS messages certified by a notary, as well as correspondence using WhatsApp and Viber services, can act as significant evidence. But what is this for?
The situations can be very different - from family troubles to serious violations of various obligations. In such cases, electronic correspondence can become a good evidence base that will help win the case.
On what grounds? email correspondence could it be evidence?
According to Article 55 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation, evidence is considered to be information obtained legally, which is used to consider a case and make a decision on this case. But can SMS correspondence or WhatsApp chat become evidence?
They can, Article 71 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation directly states this. According to it, information for consideration of a case may include digital records obtained through electronic communications.
How do you document correspondence using SMS, WhatsApp and Viber?
Although according to the law, electronic correspondence can become evidence, it is not very clear how it is documented? In fact, everything is much simpler than it seems.
First of all, the correspondence is transferred to a material source, and then printed in good quality on paper. Correspondence can be provided to the court only in this printed form. In addition, the applicant must indicate: when, by whom and under what circumstances the relevant entries were made.
But just recording the correspondence is not enough; the court must confirm its authenticity. This can be done in one of four ways:
- Record the correspondence, print it out, draw up a protocol with the obligatory presence of witnesses, indicating their personal data.
- In the case of documenting correspondence before the start of the trial, the procedure is the same, only instead of witnesses, the presence of a notary is required. The notary officially certifies the correspondence, which can then be sent to the court.
- If the consideration of the case has already begun, the correspondence must be documented in accordance with Article 71 of the Code of Civil Procedure of the Russian Federation. In this case, by court decision, materials can be requested, including from telecom operators.
- Another method requires an examination, then recording the correspondence, printing it on paper, as well as a written expert opinion regarding the content of the correspondence.
Where can I certify telephone correspondence?
SMS messages, as well as correspondence on WhatsApp and Viber can be certified at a notary office. To do this, call +7 495 767-12-77 and make an appointment with a notary.
Most companies understand the importance of creating backups. But the problem is that not many companies have an idea of what a data backup strategy should be. As a result, they lose information, clients, and therefore money. Back in 2014, experts reported that businesses lose about $1.7 trillion dollars a year due to irretrievable losses of valuable data that for some reason were not backed up. Now this figure has increased, since an hour-long forced downtime of a data center costs the operator $50,000 - $80,000. Two years ago, an hour-long downtime entailed losses of $40,000 - $60,000.
Each year this amount grows as the value of the data gradually increases. And it’s not just about information - after all, ordinary equipment downtime due to various kinds of problems hurts the wallets of both the company that owns the infrastructure and its clients.
In the first half of 2016 alone, 554 million records were lost or stolen as a result of cyberattacks. The most common purpose of hacking is to steal users' personal data. In the United States, the most attacked area was healthcare. At the same time, government bodies in the first half of 2016 lost maximum amount data (we are talking about lost or stolen data).
Moreover, for the entire 2015, 707.5 million records were lost or stolen as a result of cyber attacks. This, however, is less than in 2014, when the same figure was 1.02 billion records.
Among the reasons for data loss is the unpreparedness of companies for critical events (power failures, physical damage to equipment, hacking and data theft, natural disasters). If you don’t take care of backups in advance, it will be excruciatingly painful later, many have heard about this. But, as they say, “the mice cried, injected themselves, but continued to eat the cactus.” Let's see what unexpected cases happen that suddenly lead to a partial or complete stop in the work of telecommunication companies and their divisions. This isn't all about data loss and backups, but these situations make you think about how quickly a well-run process/company operation can turn into chaos. Despite planning, unexpected situations can and will definitely arise, sooner or later.
A sad toy story
One of the most sensational stories previously was the loss by Pixar employees of a large amount of data on ToyStory 2. Then one of the employees accidentally erased from the server a database with hundreds of important elements of character animation, the source code of the characters themselves, etc. After the company decided to restore the data from the backup, it turned out that the backup had not been working for more than a month.There was a threat that a whole month of work (or even more) would go to waste. But then it turned out that one of the project managers regularly sent all the data to his home PC in order to be able to work on the project at home. Only thanks to this (and, it should be noted, this was a violation of corporate rules) the data was restored.
If the data had not been on the home server, the project could have been delayed, and the company would have found itself in a very unpleasant situation.
Accident involving a data center
If we talk about sudden events that led to data loss and damage, then we cannot help but recall the case from 2007. Then Rackspace (which was not yet as established as it would be years later) encountered a surprise. An SUV crashed into her data center. The driver of this car suffered from diabetes. During the trip, he lost consciousness, his foot pressed the gas pedal, and the car, flying off the roadway, crashed at full speed into an object in which the center of the energy infrastructure of the company's data center was located.It started working right away assistance system power supply, but a problem arose - the main cooling system did not start. Because of this, the equipment quickly overheated, so the company employees decided to turn off everything so that the servers and other equipment did not fail.
As a result, the data center stood idle for about five hours, during which nothing worked. These five hours cost the company $3.5 million. Quite a lot.
... and a few more sad IT stories
A failure in the system is difficult to predict, which is logical. Failures occur even in the most reliable systems that rely on powerful infrastructure. But the frequency of failures can be reduced, and significantly, by using redundant systems. In a reliable infrastructure, any part of it can (and should, in theory) be redundant, including power, cooling, etc. High quality data centers use N+1 and N+2 designs to ensure high system reliability. Requirements for the reliability of data center infrastructure are growing, as the cost of forced downtime is rising. However, problems still happen.For example, in the same year of 2013, one of the largest hosting providers in the world stopped working. In the company's data center located in Utah, USA, problems arose as a result of a hardware failure during maintenance work on the server. And this resulted in a number of equipment outages throughout the data center. As a result, a huge number of web services and sites stopped functioning for a while. This failure cost the hosting provider a considerable amount of money.
And immediately after the release of the game console to the market Xbox One the load on the company’s servers has increased (and very significantly). Because of this, it started to fail and cloud service Windows Azure. Problems with work were observed throughout the day Xbox Live- data sometimes was not saved, sometimes it was not loaded, multiplayer in games did not work.
In 2015 it suffered famous company Vtech, which produces toys and electronic devices for children. Then someone hacked the company's servers, and 4.8 million records from the customer database were stolen. In addition, data on 200,000 children (their names were indicated by their parents during registration) were also stolen.
As it turned out, the company did not follow the principles very carefully information security. Weak passwords weak encryption, a small number of backups - all this led to big problems. Vtech has to some extent lost the trust of customers and investors who are dissatisfied with the negligence of employees.
Already this year, another case of irresponsible work became known. The head of a small hosting company that served about 1,500 clients was found to be responsible for the loss of data. One busy evening, Marco Marsala ran the command rm -rf (foo)/(bar) on all servers, and the variables (foo)/(bar) were not set (by mistake). As a result, all data was deleted from all servers.
By an unfortunate coincidence, drives with backups were mounted to the servers. All this data was also erased. The affected company owner asked other users if it was possible to recover information after running the command rm -rf (foo)/(bar). It is clear that other users did not tell him anything good. As a result, inattention led to the fact that the business had to be closed (this was reported by the same Marsala). So it’s not enough to make backups; they also need to be stored in a safe place. In the comments, users indicated that “If you only have one backup, you don’t have a backup,” which, in fact, is true in most cases.
And it’s not just small companies that have problems. For example, one of the world's largest banks, Barclays, was fined several million US dollars a couple of years ago. Reason: partial loss business correspondence in 10 (!) years. The company lost data due to imperfect data storage systems. A technical glitch means the letters are lost.
And it would be fine if only banks lost letters - after all, financial companies, although they must have a perfect telecommunications infrastructure, are not the creators of email services, like, for example, Google. Yes, yes, this company is also far from ideal in terms of storing user information. In 2011, Gmail Post service from Google, made thousands of its users worry.
Some of them, having logged into their account, did not see any letters or contacts. Then, according to Google, “only 0.08%” of the total number of service users were affected. But at that time, 193 million people used Gmail, and even a hundredth of a percent of this number was the population of a small city. One of the service’s clients then complained about the loss of 17,000 letters - this was all his activity for the entire time.
Most of the company's data was returned because Google places data backup at the forefront of all the company's work. But some users were still left with problematic accounts, plus Gmail’s reputation suffered.
Reasons for data loss and backups in companies
Among the most common reasons that lead to data loss and backup copies data, we highlight five main points. These are media failure, human error, software error, hardware error and problems with network equipment.Media failure
This is one of the most common reasons for data loss. Most often, this problem occurs if the media are not monitored, and the condition of such equipment is not regularly checked. Failure to follow the manufacturer's instructions or careless handling of media can all cause a failure.Human factor
This is the second most common reason for the failure of data backup systems, as a result of which information is either not backed up at all, or the backups themselves are erased. In order to avoid similar problems, the staff must be qualified, clear instructions and plans are needed that must be followed.Software glitch
This is also one of the most common problems. Updating software, replacing one program with another, adding a software module to a backup system - there are many reasons for failure. And the more complex such a system is, the higher the likelihood of failure.Hardware failure
Likewise previous problem, the equipment may fail when replacing some hardware module, due to physical obsolescence of hardware systems or for no apparent reason.Network failure
Malformed script, failure network equipment, some protocol compatibility problems or dozens of other reasons may affect the progress Reserve copy data.Individuals are no better than companies (maybe even worse) when it comes to backing up data. Back in 2015, Backblaze conducted a user survey, which found that only 39% of users even completely back up their data every year. Only 8% of respondents do this every day.
As a conclusion
A company's own telecommunications infrastructure is complex, expensive and time-consuming. Of course, there are times when you simply cannot do without your own data center. But in the vast majority of cases, it is easier for a company to use ready-made infrastructure, including backup systems, than to deploy its own system.In any case, for whatever purpose you need significant computing power, we have a service"
The study was carried out during the period 08.15.-10.1.2006. The process of collecting primary statistical data involved 137 respondents who filled out online questionnaires.
Introduction
Today, every company uses email as one of the main means of business communication. At the same time, at large enterprises the daily volume of correspondence can amount to tens and hundreds of gigabytes. All these messages are stored in folders of employees' personal email clients, which simply “swell” over time. As a result, management has to make a choice: implement special solution for centralized archiving and storage of corporate correspondence or try to ignore the problem. Note that in some cases the need for a centralized solution may be dictated by relevant regulations, although for Russia this is a rather rare situation. In addition, both the organization’s IT security service and commercial departments can receive a number of benefits from using a specialized solution. Moreover, it is believed all over the world that an effectively functioning IT infrastructure in any case should include a centralized archive of corporate mail.
This research is the first public Russian project aimed at studying the problem of centralized email archiving in a corporate environment. The study aims to identify the views of Russian organizations on the problem of collecting and storing electronic messages, to study the benefits of using a specialized solution and the requirements that business places on similar products. In addition, the study allows us to find out the plans of Russian companies to introduce centralized corporate archives into their IT infrastructure.
General conclusions
- Only 14% of respondents use specialized solutions for archiving email traffic, while 86% of companies simply turn a blind eye to the problem.
- Internal IT security (protection from insiders and leaks, incident investigation) leads among all the benefits that a business can receive from implementing a centralized archive of corporate correspondence.
- The ideal archive in the eyes of Russian companies is a safe, productive, automated product with rich analytical functionality.
- The majority of respondents (62%) are convinced of the need to archive not only email traffic, but also all Internet traffic. This helps create a comprehensive system of protection against leaks and insiders.
- Serious growth awaits Russian market mail traffic archiving tools. 31% of respondents plan to implement a centralized archive in 2006 and 2007, and 26% - in 2008-2009. Thus, from 2006 to 2009, more than half of the surveyed companies (57%) are going to acquire a centralized archive.
Research methodology
The study was carried out during the period 08.15.-10.1.2006. The process of collecting primary statistical data involved 137 respondents who filled out online questionnaires on the website CNews.ru. The survey questions and research results were prepared by the InfoWatch analytical center. The data below is rounded to the nearest whole number unless precision is stated explicitly.
Respondent's portrait
In Fig. Figure 1 shows a portrait of respondents by the number of computerized workplaces in the organization. Largest part of the surveyed companies (43%) have less than 500 computerized workplaces. The share of medium-sized organizations (501-1000 places) accounted for 29% of the surveyed organizations. Representatives of large businesses made up two more segments: 16% (1001-5000 places) and 12% (more than 5000 places).
Fig.1
The following diagram (Fig. 2) shows the distribution of respondents by occupation. The largest part of the surveyed organizations works in the field of telecommunications and IT (36%). Financial services and insurance accounted for 22% of respondents; for ministries and departments - 17%, fuel and energy complex - 13% and other sectors of the economy (trade, production) - 12%.
Fig.2
Archiving correspondence in practice
The first main question of the InfoWatch analytical center was aimed at finding out how exactly Russian enterprises solve the problem of email archiving in practice. In other words, do they already use special centralized archives or simply ignore the problem, leaving it to their employees or even to chance.
In Fig. Figure 3 shows the distribution of answers to the question of how the organization solves the problem of collecting and storing corporate correspondence. It turned out that only 14% of respondents use specialized solutions, while 86% of companies simply bury their heads in the sand. Of these, 49% of organizations believe that each employee must “get out” on his own: make backup copies on CD, empty folders in the email client, upload messages to the hard drive, etc. Finally, 37% of 86% prefer to ignore the problem completely.
Fig.3
As CNews Analytics experts point out, this distribution of responses raises serious concerns, since in almost half of the companies (49%) the problem of collecting and storing corporate correspondence is solved, in fact, by “homemade” methods. The fact that staff archive and back up their communications themselves creates dangerous risks of leaking confidential information if the archive or backup is compromised. Moreover, staff spend their time performing operations that are simply not intended job descriptions, and often employees may simply not have enough qualifications to perform functions traditionally assigned to the IT department.
According to the InfoWatch analytical center, Russian companies today are still in the “stone age” in terms of collecting and storing corporate correspondence. Moreover, no obstacles to the implementation of specialized tools can serve as sufficient grounds for assigning the responsibility for creating corporate archives to office employees or even trying to turn a blind eye to the problem. It is obvious that with the increasing informatization of domestic organizations, the accumulation and preservation of electronic messages will become an increasingly important task. Every organization will have to solve this problem, one way or another.
Incentives to use central archives
One of the most important results of the study was the identification of the benefits that businesses can receive from using centralized archives of corporate correspondence. A priori, InfoWatch experts have identified 5 main reasons why organizations use specialized solutions for collecting and storing electronic messages.
- Some laws, standards, and other regulations require companies to create and maintain email archives. For example, the Bank of Russia standard for IT security (STO BR IBBS-1.0-2006), the Russian law “On Archiving in the Russian Federation”, the American laws SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) , etc.
- Analysis of all incoming and outgoing messages is effective method investigation of any corporate incidents, especially in the field of IT security and financial fraud;
- A business can integrate a centralized storage with a comprehensive system for protecting against leaks of confidential information and, thereby, increase the efficiency of this system;
- A centralized mail archive solves the problem of backing up electronic messages, which otherwise each employee must solve independently;
- In the event of legal claims against the company and after an external independent audit, authentic letters from the corporate archive can serve as evidence in court;
- The ability to make specific selections from a correspondence repository allows you to solve many business problems in the field of marketing, sales, etc.
CNews Analytics specialists note that in the countries of the European Union and North America, businesses and government agencies are simply required to create centralized archives, since these requirements are enshrined in law or regulation. However, in Russia the situation is somewhat different - the regulatory burden is much lighter, although some laws and standards in the field of collecting and storing messages still exist. For convenience, the most popular standards are grouped in the table below (see Table 1).
Table 1
Laws and regulations in the field of collection and storage of corporate correspondence
|
Name |
Scope |
Requirements |
|
Basel II Agreement (“International convergence of capital measurement and capital standards: new approaches”) |
All banks in Europe and Russia, as well as the largest US banks (in Russia since 2009) |
Create archives of electronic correspondence with the ability to conduct analytical samples and guarantee the authenticity of stored messages |
|
Bank of Russia standard: “Ensuring information security of organizations of the banking system of the Russian Federation. General provisions" (STO BR IBBS-1.0-2006), §8.2.6.4 |
All Russian banks, including the Central Bank (the standard is still advisory in nature) |
§8.2.6.4: “E-mail must be archived. The archive should be accessible only to the unit (person) in the organization responsible for ensuring information security. Changes to the archive are not allowed. Access to archive information should be limited.” |
|
the federal law“On archiving in the Russian Federation” |
All government bodies, local government bodies of the municipal district and urban district |
Create archives for storing, compiling, recording and using archival documents, including e-mail. Restrict access to this information, regardless of its form of ownership, if it constitutes a state or other secret protected by the legislation of the Russian Federation. |
|
EU Data Retention Directive |
All telecommunications companies doing business in the European Union |
Archive and store for at least one year all information transmitted via electronic channels communications: e-mail, conversations on mobile and wired phones, fax documents, etc. |
|
SOX Act (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002), §802 |
All public companies listed on the US stock market |
Collect, archive and store electronic corporate correspondence for at least seven years. The authenticity of electronic communications must be guaranteed, and mechanisms must be implemented to allow sampling from the archive for the purpose of conducting a full-scale retrospective analysis. |
|
HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996), Security and Privacy Rule |
All medical, insurance and financial organizations that handle sensitive health information |
Each organization must keep for at least 6 years from the date of establishment or last used all your electronic documentation. |
|
SEC Rule 17a-4. |
All financial public companies listed on the US stock market |
Store correspondence with clients as a separate database. This database must comply with standards for such parameters as searching and checking information, support and archiving. In addition, the authenticity of electronic messages stored in the database must be ensured. |
Thus, the regulatory burden of Russian organizations is small: government agencies are subject to the Federal Law “On Archiving in the Russian Federation”, financial companies are subject to the Basel II agreement and the Central Bank standard, and all other organizations encounter foreign laws only when carrying out international transactions, for example, IPOs, opening branches in the EU, etc. It can be summarized that the specificity of the Russian market for archiving corporate correspondence is the almost complete absence of strict requirements that would oblige organizations to collect and save electronic messages.
What incentives then do domestic enterprises see in introducing specialized archives? The answer to this question can be found in Fig. 4. InfoWatch experts asked respondents to rate on a 6-point scale the benefits that businesses receive from using centralized solutions for collecting and storing electronic correspondence. A score of “6” meant that this stimulus was “very important” for the respondent, while a score of “1” meant, on the contrary, “not very important.” The six stimuli listed above were offered as response options:
- compliance with regulations,
- investigation of IT security incidents,
- centralized creation of backup copies of messages,
- the ability to present messages as evidence in court,
- creating powerful retrospective samples to solve business problems,
- integration of the archive with a system for protecting against leaks of confidential information.
As it turns out, some of these incentives have no weight at all for Russian companies. For example, absolutely all respondents believe that authentic electronic messages from a specialized archive will not help in any way in the event of prosecution. As a result, no organization surveyed rated this incentive higher than a “3.” In other words, all estimates in in this case distributed from “1” (not important at all) to “3” (more likely not important than important).
Fig.4
In Fig. Figure 4 shows the distribution of ratings for all six stimuli. The importance of one or another benefit from using a centralized archive decreases from left to right. It is easy to notice that in the category “compliance with laws and standards,” a total of 34% of respondents gave a rating higher than “3.” In other words, this incentive matters only to one third of Russian organizations surveyed. According to the InfoWatch analytical center, if a similar survey were conducted among European or North American companies, then at least two more respondents would have indicated regulations. However, this is precisely where the specificity of the Russian market manifests itself. However, an analysis of the correlation between the field of activity and the scale of the organization on the one hand, as well as the importance of the normative factor on the other hand, allowed us to establish the following correspondence. First of all, the 34% of respondents who rated “compliance with laws and standards” above three included absolutely all ministries and departments participating in the survey (17%), as well as the majority of financial organizations (17% of 22%), mostly large ones. Note that these sectors must indeed comply, respectively, with the Federal Law “On Archiving in the Russian Federation” and the Bank of Russia IT security standard (as well as the Basel II agreement). Although the fact that only 14% of all respondents use centralized archives in practice speaks for itself...
Meanwhile, in the following figure (Fig. 5), for completeness, the average ratings for each stimulus are indicated, rounded to the nearest tenth of a point. As you can see, only four factors received a rating higher than “4”: investigation of IT security incidents (4.7), integration with a leak protection system (4.5), creation of backup copies (4.4) and the ability to compile analytical samples ( 4.2). This means that these four incentives are of the greatest value to respondents.
Fig.5
As CNews Analytics experts point out, the distribution of points is quite natural. This is especially true for the ability to conduct an effective investigation of almost any internal IT security incident, that is, to identify an insider and prove his guilt. The point is that on this moment Russian organizations have developed a vicious practice of conducting internal investigations, in which the personal computers of suspected employees are seized, the employees themselves are driven from their workplaces, and IT security specialists consistently study emails in the email client. The disadvantages of this approach are obvious. Firstly, it is almost impossible to conduct such an investigation without the staff noticing. This means that within a few minutes after the start of investigative actions, the entire organization will find out that there is a “mole” in the company. It is possible that as a result of gossip, information will reach the press or competitors. Secondly, it is impossible to hide the circle of suspects. In other words, every employee whose workstation arrested, he will know that management does not trust him. This will have a particularly bad effect on the general climate among the staff if it turns out that the insider was never found. Employees may feel offended, which under certain circumstances leads to sabotage according to the principle: “If you were wronged undeservedly, deserve it!” Thirdly, even a slightly savvy renegade will figure out to simply delete messages that compromise him from the email client. Since IT security specialists do not know exactly which of the suspects is an insider, they will not take the time to restore erased data on all workstations in a row.
Meanwhile, if the company has a centralized archive of corporate correspondence, then the entire investigation will take a few hours at most, during which the security officer will sit quietly in his chair and make analytical selections from the repository. Message filters, sorting by groups, search key phrases- all these tools allow you to quickly find any suspicious messages in the general archive. At the same time, no one bothers innocent staff and spoils the working atmosphere in the office. This is exactly what civilized companies do that care about themselves and their employees. According to the expert assessment of InfoWatch, approximately 80% of internal IT security incidents can be resolved by analyzing electronic messages. Thus, creating a centralized repository of incoming and outgoing letters allows you to conduct effective investigations even in a large company.
|
Case from practice An example of a victory over insiders was demonstrated in mid-February 2006 by the Russian system integrator LETA IT-company. Thanks to a competent approach to internal IT security, the company was able to neutralize an insider who was caught abusing his official position. |
According to the InfoWatch analytical center, respondents quite rightly assessed the importance of such a tool as analytical samples from a centralized repository. The fact is that a corporate solution for collecting and storing correspondence allows an organization to receive a number of benefits when solving business problems. The following are just typical scenarios:
- The software company has released the next version of its product. After several months, the head of the technical department decided to evaluate the dynamics of changes in the quality of work of programmers and testers. To do this, he asks his subordinate to write a report on the number of calls to the service technical support from the users. In this case, it is necessary to sort requests into categories - separately for each version software product, as well as provide the dynamics of the growth in the number of requests over time. This task is very easily solved with the help of an archive of corporate correspondence. An employee of the technical department makes an analytical sample, first filtering out all requests to the technical support service, then dividing them into different versions products (filtering by keywords), and then creating an analytical report (reflecting dynamics over time) using powerful built-in tools. All this will take no more than 30 minutes. For clarity, this example omitted two more roles: the corporate archive administrator (the person who configures its operation, but does not have access to the messages themselves) and the security officer (the person who has access to the messages, but does not have rights to manage the repository). This separation of roles is necessary to ensure the authenticity of the archive. Note that without using a corporate correspondence repository, solving the problem posed by the technical director will be much more difficult.
- The telecommunications company launched new service, for example, a new tariff plan for Internet access or mobile communications. The marketing director wants to gauge consumer reaction to a new product by comparing it with the reaction to a service launched, say, last year. He instructs the marketing manager to write a corresponding report, who, with the help of the administrator and the security officer, simply needs to filter out all messages received in the company's public mailboxes and mentioning the new service. Similar to the previous case, the report is compiled in no more than 30 minutes. As a result, the head of the marketing department can operate with real numbers, performing control and planning functions in the activities of his department.
- The head of one of the divisions of a large company plans to create an expert or simply working group to resolve a specific issue or develop a new project. When selecting members of the team being formed, the manager is faced with the question: “Do the candidates under consideration know each other?” Instead of inviting more than a dozen specialists to his place and asking them if they know anyone in the room, the boss simply asks them to “punch” the names of candidates in the mail archive. It is almost certain that people who know each other at least a little and work in the same company have exchanged letters at least once. Meanwhile, a large number of shared messages may indicate friendship between employees and stable camaraderie. Thus, an experienced manager can take into account the important interpersonal component when forming a team of professionals.
There are quite a lot of such examples, since analytical samples are required in many areas of corporate management. They can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of internal corporate communications, marketing campaigns, technical solutions, etc.
Requirements for archiving systems
At the next stage of the study, the InfoWatch analytical center asked respondents to rate the degree of importance various characteristics centralized archives. As in the previous case, companies were presented with six parameters to choose from, each of which could be rated on a 6-point scale (1 - “least important”, 6 - “extremely important”). Among the options offered to respondents were the following:
- High performance (resistance to loads and intense mail flow);
- Powerful Tools for searching the archive and forming analytical samples;
- High archive security (protection against unauthorized modification of messages);
- Wide range of supported external DBMS for message export;
- Flexible storage and archiving policies that are executed automatically;
- Compatible with backup tools on material media.
- The distribution of answers is presented in the figure below (see Fig. 6).
Fig.6
In Fig. Figure 6 shows the distribution of ratings for all six parameters. The importance of one or another characteristic of a centralized archive decreases from left to right. It is easy to notice that in the “wide range of supported DBMS” category, a total of 30% of respondents gave a rating higher than “3,” which is less than half of the companies surveyed. According to CNews Analytics experts, such neglect of this parameter is easily explained by the fact that today the DBMS market is dominated by products from only three manufacturers. These are Oracle, IBM and Microsoft. In other words, “broad support” implies the ability to work either with all three types of DBMS, or with the most popular of them - Oracle.
In addition, attention is drawn to some uncertainty among respondents in assessing the parameter “Support for hard backup copies” (compatibility with means of creating backup copies on physical media). From Fig. 6 shows that a total of 59% of respondents gave ratings of “3” and “4”. As InfoWatch experts point out, such a relatively neutral reaction to this characteristic of the solution may be due to the fact that Russian companies simply do not need to store electronic messages for long term. If Western organizations are required to follow the letter of the law and store mail for 6-7 years, then Russian companies are left to their own devices in this regard. So instead of recording data on magnetic tapes, organizations can simply delete it.
Meanwhile, in the following figure (Fig. 7), for completeness, the average ratings for each stimulus are indicated, rounded to the nearest tenth of a point. As you can see, only four factors received a rating higher than “4”: investigation of IT security incidents (4.7), integration with a leak protection system (4.5), creation of backup copies (4.4) and the ability to compile analytical samples ( 4.2). This means that these four incentives are of the greatest value to respondents.
Fig.7
Low scores of the two least important parameters have already been commented on above, so let’s focus on the most popular characteristics of a centralized archive. First of all, respondents rated the security of messages in the archive quite highly (4.6). According to CNews Analytics experts, archive protection cannot be neglected, since if correspondence is leaked, the company’s commercial and technical secrets may fall into the hands of competitors or fraudsters. At the same time, the formula is widely known: the leak of only 20% of trade secrets in 60% of cases leads to bankruptcy of the company.
The increased attention of respondents to the ability to create analytical samples (4.2) is explained by the fact that Russian organizations generally understand that a centralized archive can serve as an excellent tool for solving business problems. Scenarios for such use of the archive were given above.
Of particular interest are such characteristics as high performance and the ability to set flexible policies that will be executed automatically. At the beginning of the study, it was already indicated that the mail traffic of a large organization can amount to tens of gigabytes per day. Moreover, this is not such a rarity. For example, InfoWatch solution Mail Storage daily processes and archives more than 20 GB of mail messages from VimpelCom OJSC. In this case, not only high performance and fault tolerance of the product are important, but also automation of the entire collection and archiving process.
Archiving Internet Data
With their penultimate question, experts from the InfoWatch analytical center tried to find out the respondents’ attitude to the need to archive not only email, but also Internet data. Indeed, in some cases, an organization needs to store all web traffic and, in general, all information sent over communication channels. The distribution of answers is presented in the figure below (see Fig. 8).
Fig.8
The need to save all web traffic may arise when implementing a comprehensive system of protection against leaks and insiders. In this case, the IT security department will have a tool at its disposal that will allow it to investigate leaks via web channels, analyze the nature of the use of the organization’s web resources, etc. This opinion is generally shared by 62% of respondents, who chose the options “Very Important” (24%) and “Important” (38%). Only 38% of companies hold the opposite point of view. Thus, supplementing traditional email archives with functions for collecting and storing Internet data can be a promising move for IT solution providers.
Plans of Russian companies
Fig.9
According to CNews Analytics experts, the Russian market for archiving electronic correspondence is expected to experience serious growth over the next four years. Moreover, companies that do not plan to implement appropriate solutions today may change their minds in the coming years or even accelerate plans already agreed upon. Thus, both suppliers and customers should pay attention to centralized archiving of corporate mail.
Conclusion
Only 14% of respondents use specialized solutions for archiving email traffic, while 86% of companies simply turn a blind eye to the problem. Of these, 49% of organizations believe that each employee should solve the issue on their own (getting out of it as best they can), and 37% prefer to ignore the problem completely.
Among the incentives for implementing a centralized archive, respondents consider the most important to be the ability to investigate IT security incidents (average score 4.7 out of 6), integration with a leak protection system (4.5 out of 6), and creation of backup copies (4.4 out of 6) and the ability to create analytical samples to solve business problems (4.2 out of 6). This distribution of answers has a reasonable basis, since the use of a corporate archive really allows you to effectively investigate IT security incidents and prevent leaks, as well as relieve staff of the responsibility for creating “homemade” archives.
The most important requirements for the characteristics of a centralized archive, according to respondents, are high security (average score 4.6 out of 6), powerful features for creating analytical samples (4.2 out of 6), as well as high performance and flexible automatic policies (4 out of 6 each). Thus, IT security problems again come to the fore, although message analysis capabilities, high performance, fault tolerance and solution automation are slightly less important.
Meanwhile, 62% of respondents believe that it is necessary to archive not only email traffic, but also all Internet traffic. This helps create a comprehensive system of protection against leaks and insiders. In addition, the IT security department has a tool at its disposal that allows it to investigate leaks via web channels, analyze the nature of use of the organization’s web resources, etc.
Further, 31% of respondents plan to implement a centralized archive within the next two years (2006 and 2007), and 26% - within the next four years (2008-2009). Thus, from 2006 to 2009, more than half of the companies surveyed (57%) are going to implement a centralized archive. Finally, 24% of respondents are postponing this task until the distant future (since 2010), and 5% are not going to implement the archive at all, since “it is not a priority.”
About InfoWatch
InfoWatch is an innovative company that develops unique technologies for the promising area of information security - protection against internal threats. The company's competence includes minimizing the risk of leakage, data destruction, sabotage, industrial espionage and other careless and unlawful actions of employees in relation to corporate information.
The company's unique solutions allow you to control transactions with documents inside corporate network and prevent those that do not comply with the security policy. In particular, InfoWatch provides checking of mail and Internet traffic, as well as monitoring at the level file operations(copying, deleting, renaming, changing, printing documents). Together with traditional protection systems ( firewalls, filters, authorization, crypto-protection, etc.) InfoWatch allows you to build a comprehensive corporate security structure by providing the “rear” - reliable protection from internal threats.
Among our clients are the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, HydroOGK, Transneft, VimpelCom, Megafon, Federal Customs Service of the Russian Federation, Vneshtorgbank.
About the agency CNews Analytics
The daily online publication CNews.ru is the largest Russian online publication dedicated to the Russian and global IT market. The publication specializes in current news from the world of high technology.
CNews.ru news is up-to-date information about the high-tech market, the latest developments, new hardware and current software. Much attention is paid to the state of electronic business in Russia and in the world; news about mergers, divisions and acquisitions of companies, as well as their financial situation, is quickly released. Up to 100 news items are published per day covering the state of the Russian and foreign markets.
CNews.ru is not only a news feed. The site was created according to the principle of a portal: analytical articles, market research results, audience surveys are published, there is a rich set of services, including a calendar plan of exhibitions, conferences and presentations dedicated to high technology And e-business, a thematic forum, computer press announcements, as well as an extensive database of press releases from high-tech companies.
Let's assume you have to deal with a legal entity registered in the Russian Federation. But you only know its name and you don’t have money to use it paid services or ordering professional competitive intelligence.
What can you find out about a company on the Internet for free, instantly and legally?
1. General information from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities
What you can find: date of creation of the company, registration address, full names of the founders and general director, to which branch of the Federal Tax Service and the Pension Fund the company is attached, types of activities, history of changes to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (changes in the charter, appointment of general directors, etc.).
You can search for companies and individual entrepreneurs both by OGRN/TIN and by name/full name. Please note that to get all the data you need to download the PDF from the link. In addition to the first paragraph of the article, be sure to apply the second.
2. Have documents to change information been submitted to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities?
What you can find: information about legal entities that are in the process of registering/making changes to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
In short: we check whether any information from the database mentioned in paragraph `1 will change in the near future.
Usage notes: similar to the previous paragraph.
3. Is the legal address reliable?
What you can check: Is the company address used for mass registration of legal entities?
4. Court cases in which the company name is mentioned
What you can find: a sea of interesting details: tax evasion, salary arrears, industrial safety violations, etc. This item is required to be completed before the interview.
Usage notes: To avoid wasting time looking through similar cases and quickly find something really interesting, go to the “categories” tab.
Analogues:
5. Debts to bailiffs
What you can find: whether the company has overdue payments to the Pension Fund, unpaid taxes or debts to employees/partners that are already being collected with the help of bailiffs.
Usage notes: for the search, it is better to use not the name, but the OGRN, which can be found in paragraph 1. It also makes sense to contact the general director regarding his debts as an individual.
6. Is the company bankrupt?
What you can find: messages about the various stages of the bankruptcy procedure of a given company (if there were any): results of meetings of creditors, results of auctions, etc.
Usage notes: To search, it is better to use the OGRN, which can be found in the first paragraph.
7. Mortgaged property of the company
What you can find: dates of birth, passport numbers, TIN, email addresses, VIN numbers of cars.
Usage notes: open notification texts using links. They are the most interesting things.
P.S. Ivan Sidorovich Sidorov apparently lives in a slightly distorted reality, where he does business with Ivan Petrovich Petrov from Romashka LLC :-)
8. Does the company participate in government procurement?
What you can find: what and in what volume the company supplied to government agencies.
9. Does the company fulfill its obligations to partners?
What you can check: has it been entered? entity to the register of unscrupulous suppliers.
10. Are the company’s licenses valid?
What you can check: Are the licenses listed on the company’s website valid?
Usage notes: For example, three registers are given, but there are more of them.
11. Contacts from the “yellow pages”
What you can find: website, phone number, actual address.
12. How much are the company's shares worth?
What you can find: dynamics of the company's share price in recent years.
Usage notes: Google the company name + “shared price”.
13. Does the company have patents?
What you can find: information about inventions that were made or purchased by the company.
Usage notes: If patents are not in the database, this does not at all guarantee their absence.
14. Information about the company’s website
A separate topic is collecting information about company websites. Both currently existing and abandoned/deleted. My modest experience in collecting information suggests that on forgotten and hidden pages Usually the most interesting things are written. This process is described in detail in three materials.