Survey Finds Half of U.S. Companies at Risk of Sensitive Information Leaks by Employees

By Stephanie Jordan
in

In November, Mimecast, a holistic email management company offering SaaS-based email archiving, continuity and security, found that 50 percent of U.S. companies are at risk of sensitive information leaks by employee emails. Based on a survey of 500 IT professionals regarding their email archiving and continuity policies, the findings underscore the risks companies take—such as costly litigation, compliance issues and loss of intellectual property—when lacking an effective data leakage prevention (DLP) solution that ensures the security of their corporate email.

Although email is one of the most common sources of internal leaks of proprietary information, the Mimecast survey found that 27 percent of companies couldn’t track email sent externally, 17 percent do not have a DLP policy and 10 percent were not sure what would happen if employees emailed confidential information out of their organization.

Mary Kay Roberto, senior vice president and general manager of Mimecast North America, said, “The survey results highlight the lack of DLP in the corporate climate and calls attention to the importance of safeguarding the information inside a company’s network. Mimecast’s SaaS solution allows companies to ensure that the information that leaves their email networks complies with internal and external security requirements. Intellectual property protection is crucial for any business and identifying and containing data leaks from internal employees through emails should be a key concern of IT professionals when planning their email security protocols.”

Published December 5, 2008