May 17, 2007

FEATURE EDITORIAL

Security Tops Greatest Impact List

Security technologies and solutions will have the greatest impact on organizations in 2007, according to the results of a new web poll conducted by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA). The poll of more than 1,100 technology professionals found that 24.3 percent of them believe security technologies will have the greatest impact on their organizations this year. Security ranked second in a similar CompTIA web poll in 2006.

"Information security considerations affect virtually everything an organization does, whether it is internal email communications, business-to-business data exchange or electronic commerce with consumers," said John Venator, president and chief executive officer for CompTIA. "The proliferation of devices that are now connected to networks, and the increasing mobility of customers and workers have pushed security to top of mind for everyone, from the technician monitoring the network to the business owners and operators whose livelihood can be at risk in the event of a security catastrophe."

Wireless data applications were the second most popular choice among respondents to the poll on technologies that will have the greatest impact this year, chosen by 13.1 percent of IT professionals. Convergence solutions, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony and unified messaging, placed third. In the 2006 poll, convergence was the top choice for the technology that would have the greatest impact. The fourth most popular choice for the technology that will have the greatest impact in 2007 was open source solutions, chosen by 8.5 percent of poll respondents. Virtualization technology placed fifth, at 7 percent.

Rounding out the top ten technologies that will have the greatest impact in 2007 were Web 2.0 (6.9 percent), radio frequency identification (6.5 percent), network access control (3.9 percent), business intelligence applications, and storage (3.2 percent each). The CompTIA web poll was conducted between March 29 and May 15 of this year and closed with 1,124 responses. CompTIA is a provider of vendor-neutral certifications for technology professionals.

Lack of Email or IM Retention Policies Puts Organizations at Risk

Lack of email or IM retention policies puts one in six organizations at risk, says Osterman Research. Many organizations are not sure about the length of time that email or instant messages (IM) should be kept, reveals the study on the messaging archiving market. The researchers found a significant proportion of organizations believe that preserving all email content for long periods of time is the least risky option. A somewhat smaller percentage of organizations believe that the use of an archiving solution is the least risky option.

Additional highlights from the Osterman market research on demand drivers for messaging archiving and related technologies:

• More than one-third of organizations have no systems or policies in place that will protect important business records and other critical content from being deleted, either intentionally or inadvertently.
• One in four organizations have only policies that will protect data, but they have not implemented systems that will protect this data from accidental or intentional deletion.
• A vast majority of organizations have been required to produce email in response to one or more internal or external requests.
• Email and instant messaging policies are not as well deployed as they need to be -- nearly one in six organizations do not have either an email or instant messaging retention policy.
• While most users are fully aware of email and instant messaging retention policies, a significant proportion of users are not adequately aware of the policies that their organizations have implemented.
• A vast majority of organizations maintain local message stores in which individual users store messaging system content.
• Since many of the message stores that are stored locally cannot be backed up to a central location, they cannot be searched for eDiscovery and their content is otherwise unavailable to the organization.
• While only a relatively small percentage of organizations have actually deployed a true archiving system, dramatically more organizations believe that archiving would be desirable or very desirable.
• Most organizations do not treat their email message stores as a searchable archive of content for their employees. In fact, nearly one-third of organizations do not permit any employees to search through email archives for old content.
• Most organizations have been required by a court or regulator to produce employee emails and, to a lesser extent, instant messages.
• Most organizations are required to produce archived or backed up data a minimum of four times each year, or at least once per quarter.

About the market research report

The Osterman Research 67-page report, "Messaging Archiving Market Trends, 2007-2010" (May 2007), focuses on demand drivers for messaging archiving and related technologies. The research conducted for this report, as well as the report itself, are focused on the needs of vendors, investors and others who are interested in participating in the messaging archiving market in some way, whether as providers of archiving systems, backup systems, forensics services or related offerings. An executive summary is available at the Osterman website.

IN THE NEWS

PGP and Intel Team to Deliver Enterprise Data Protection

PGP Corporation, a provider of email and data encryption software for enterprise data protection, announced last week an agreement with Intel Corporation to deliver a variety of data security solutions. These solutions will be marketed and fulfilled through Intel's channel and direct customers, which include global resellers, system integrators, and distributors.

PGP says its solutions deliver a broad range of functionality—from centrally managed full disk encryption to encrypted local and portable storage—for the complete protection of data. The new solutions will operate on new Intel Centrino and Intel vPro processor technology-based systems running Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows XP. In addition, integration of PGP data security solutions within the Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT) framework offers enhanced manageability and security to enterprises of all sizes.

"This market-driven agreement helps bring data security to the masses, combining Intel's widely deployed mobile and desktop processor technology with our market-leading data encryption solutions," said Phillip Dunkelberger, president and CEO of PGP Corporation. "We are pleased to work with Intel to deliver trusted enterprise data protection solutions that enable customers to strategically defend their data wherever it exists."

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