Litigation Hold and In-Place Hold in Exchange 2013 and Exchange Online

Deleted

Jan 01, 1970

@TPBrennan: You bring up a good point! As long as the mailbox is on Litigation Hold / In-Place Hold, mailbox content is preserved.

Are you trying to protect against inadvertent deletion of user account?

If a mailbox is on hold, you can't delete it using Exchange tools (EAC/EMS).

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa995948%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx cmdlet does have the

IgnoreLegalHold parameter to force removal. But EMS cmdlets are and can be audited and also cmdlets and individual parameters can be controlled using

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd298183%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

RBAC.

You may be able to delete the account using Active Directory tools, in which case what you're saying would be true. We do not support using Active Directory tools to modify/remove Exchange attributes. You can use

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd638106%28v=exchg.150%29.aspx

Active Directory split permissions model to separate Exchange and Active Directory management.

Exchange Online does support

inactive mailboxes for eDiscovery, but that's more of a license reuse scenario to lower cost rather than the inadvertent user account removal scenario.

As far as intentional or malicious action (removal of user account/data destruction) is concerned, it can be argued that all data is susceptible to the same risks from entities with authorized access (admins, etc.).

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Litigation Hold and In-Place Hold in Exchange 2013 and Exchange Online