Strato Case Study

STRATO is a German-based hosting company providing domains, websites, web shops, cloud storage, email and office packages, online marketing tools, as well as customized high-end solutions. STRATO, part of the United Internet Group, currently hosts over 4 million domains for its customers across the world and operates more than 60,000 servers in their two ISO-certified data centers in Germany.

Email archiving has been a legal requirement for German companies since 2014 with regulations such as GoBD, HGB and AO. And with the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018, STRATO was receiving an increasing number of customer requests for an email archiving solution to satisfy German as well as European regulations. STRATO customers had no choice but to maintain email archives by themselves — and they were struggling given the strict regulatory requirements and the penalties for non-adherence.

Since email hosting is one of its core service offerings, STRATO wanted to introduce a scalable solution that satisfied their customers and fulfilled the strict requirements of German regulations. For example, STRATO had to make sure that the automatic archiving processes did not allow users to manipulate any data. They also wanted a fast and easy-to-use solution to search and identify personal information for GDPR. This solution should also maintain an audit log of the entire chain of custody of each individual message along with providing the Data Protection Office (DPO) in an organization rights to delete data as per Right To Be Forgotten clause in GDPR.

STRATO weighed building its own solution versus utilizing a solution from an external software provider. After considering their options, doing cost/benefit analysis and conducting due diligence on various software providers, STRATO selected Dropsuite.