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Understanding Litigation and Retention Holds

Aug 20, 2024

Litigation Hold and Retention Hold

Overview

  • Discussion on Litigation Hold and Retention Hold.
  • Previous session covered retention tags and retention policies.

Litigation Hold

  • Definition: Used to preserve the entire mailbox or contents of a mailbox.
  • User Experience:
    • Deleted emails go to the Deleted Items folder (30 days).
    • If not recovered within 30 days, they move to the Deletions folder (14 days).
    • After 14 days, emails are purged and cannot be recovered by users or administrators if purged.

Enabling Litigation Hold

  • If litigation hold is enabled (e.g., duration = 1 year):
    • Deleted emails will still move to Deleted Items and Deletions as usual.
    • If an email is purged, it moves to a Purges folder within the Recoverable Items folder and is preserved for the litigation hold duration (1 year).
    • Administrators can recover purged emails using the e-discovery tool or content search.

Preservation of Mailbox

  • Litigation hold can preserve entire mailboxes even if deleted by an administrator.
  • If an admin deletes a mailbox:
    • Mailbox goes to soft-deleted state for 30 days.
    • If the user account is purged, mailbox moves to inactive mailbox state for the duration of litigation hold (e.g., 1 year).
    • Admin can recover the mailbox using PowerShell, content search, or e-discovery tools.

Retention Hold

  • Definition: Prevents deletion of items within a mailbox for a specified time.
  • Scenario:
    • A user on leave may receive emails, but if a retention policy is in place to delete emails older than 7 days, those emails would be permanently deleted.
  • Retention Hold Functionality:
    • When enabled, the Managed Folder Assistant will bypass mailbox processing, meaning retention policies will not take action while retention hold is active.

Managing Retention Hold

  • PowerShell Only: Retention hold can only be managed via PowerShell commands.
  • Commands to Enable Retention Hold:
    • Set-Mailbox -Identity <MailboxName> -RetentionHoldEnabled $true
  • Verifying Retention Hold:
    • Get-Mailbox -Identity <MailboxName> | FL to check if retention hold is enabled.

Conclusion

  • Summary of litigation hold and retention hold definitions and functionalities.
  • Next session will cover recipient permissions in Exchange Online, including full access, send as, and send on behalf permissions.

Call to Action

  • Request for comments if viewers learned something new.
  • Encouragement to subscribe to the channel.