PST (.pst personal storage table format) files will be eliminated in August 2021 to keep information safe. IS’s OneTeam group is offering weekly Q&A sessions (next one is on April 13) to help caregivers who use this email archiving format prepare.
Information Services, in partnership with Risk Management & Compliance, is enforcing the adoption of existing policies and best practices to keep company and caregiver information safe.
As we continue to move our work and information to the cloud for better collaboration, we must adopt changes around data retention, storage best practices, how and what we migrate to the cloud, as well as how to manage disabled accounts. This includes eliminating PST format personal email archives from the computing environment across Providence’s family of organizations.
As part of this security-driven change, PST functionality will be removed on August 31, 2021.
What does this change mean?
The PST file type commonly used to archive Outlook emails, calendars and attachments, is no longer allowed. This also means that PSTs cannot be moved to Office 365 tools like OneDrive and SharePoint. Any critical information stored via email should be saved as a .msg file (normal Outlook message file) or PDF (Adobe .pdf format) if future access is needed.
Why are we eliminating PST files?
- Cyber and legal risk – Email data is often one of the first things cyber threat actors target when they steal credentials or access company systems. Keeping email data for extended periods of time represents a security and legal risk for Providence’s family of organizations and our patients.
- Best practice – Email/Outlook is not an appropriate storage location. Any emails or attachments that are worth keeping should be saved to OneDrive as Providence’s enterprise standard storage location. See the OneTeam learning portal for more information on OneDrive best practices.
- Expense – Increasing the storage capacity for our email collaboration infrastructure to permanently store an ever-expanding volume of PST archives would require Providence to spend millions of dollars each year in legal discovery.
What do I need to do?
Per our policies, email data is retained for a rolling three years. From now until August 31, 2021, caregivers who use PST files will need to proactively migrate emails they wish to retain beyond three years to their OneDrive by saving them as individual PDFs. Please note:
The entire PST file is not allowed to move to the OneDrive account, only the selected emails that are saved as a PDF.
If you run business processes that are currently reliant on PSTs, please complete this form for additional assistance. There is no charge for the consultation, however, if the recommendation includes the use of a mass move tool, the use of that tool may be charged back to your department and would require your manager’s approval.
Current policies
- Active account data retention for email: Risk and exposure increases as the amount of data retained increases. Three years of individual, non-clinical data will be the maximum retention time for most caregivers.
- PSTs are no longer allowed at Providence as email storage.
- Disabled accounts: As accounts are fully disabled in Providence Active Directory and Azure Active Directory, accounts will be held for 30 days with HR approval to ensure business continuity. After 30 days, all email and OneDrive data will be permanently deleted. SharePoint sites created under the disabled account will not be deleted. They will remain intact as they are a shared workspace.
Additional information
- Learn more about the elimination of PST files
- Attend a Q&A session on moving your PST files
- Import PSTs into the Outlook desktop application (to then save individual archived emails as PDFs to save to your OneDrive before August 31, 2021)
- OneDrive best practices
You may also visit the OneTeam site or email us at OneTeam@providence.org.