Guest Columnist: Paul Chen, Fortiva, Inc.
From Jokes to Confidential Information: Dealing With Hidden Email Risks.
Are you taking the necessary steps to protect your organization?
The increased use of email in the workplace has resulted in significant benefits for business ranging from increased productivity to improved communication among employees. But along with these benefits, a number of risks may be hiding in those corporate email files-risks that could be largely avoided with improved employee education and effective enforcement of policies.
A recently released survey, conducted by Harris Interactive for Fortiva, shows that 68 percent of U.S. employees who use email at work have sent or received email at work that could place their company at risk. Despite this, 92 percent of these employees do not believe they have ever sent a risky email. These statistics indicate an obvious lack of understanding among employees of what is and is not appropriate in corporate email.
And it's not just the content of email messages that raises cause for concern: the way employees store their email may pose an even greater risk. Over half of employees who use email at work (51 percent) have saved email outside the corporate network, making legal discovery extremely difficult.
So why aren't businesses taking this risk more seriously? In most cases, the lack of awareness extends throughout the organization, from the most senior executives to junior staff. In fact, it's often only after a company faces a lawsuit or data breach that these issues are addressed.
With the increase in regulatory compliance and legal discovery requests for email, businesses should consider taking the following steps to limit their exposure to risk:
Develop a clear messaging policy addressing what is and isn't appropriate in email. There are a number of tools and templates available to help get you started, such as the Policy Builder tool from The Electronic Communications Compliance Council (TE3C). Registration is free at www.te3c.org.
Educate your employees on the policy. A policy that is not clearly understood, cannot be enforced. Take the time to train your employees on the policy, and ask them to sign a copy of the policy to acknowledge they have read and understand it.
Adopt technology that can automatically enforce your email policy. An email archiving solution can enforce your messaging policies-both for retention and destruction of email messages-while maintaining evidentiary-quality copies of all corporate email for legal or regulatory investigations. With advanced searching across the archives, email archiving can also provide better insight into company records, enabling better business decision making, and reducing the time and cost involved in a legal discovery situation.
Enforce strict rules preventing end-users from saving corporate email outside the company network. By restricting where and how end-users can save their email, you can retain greater control over email and reduce exposure to risk. With an email archiving solution that gives end-users access to search their archived email in real time, these restrictions can be enforced without impacting access to information or productivity. PC/MNP