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Category Archives for Email Compliance

Nearly 50% of UK firms fire abusive emailers

Almost half of UK companies have dismissed employees over the past year due to e-mail abuse and over half regularly keep tabs on employees’ use of e-mail to make sure they remain compliant with company policy, a survey has found.

The survey also found that nearly half of the UK’s companies conducted investigations into e-mail leaks of confidential or sensitive data over the same period. These figures show that UK companies are more suspicious of and more rigorous in checking employees’ use of e-mail than their counterparts in Germany and France.

Research carried out by Forrester on behalf of e-mail security firm Proofpoint found that 44% of UK companies had fired employees in the past year because of violation of e-mail policies while 78% of them had disciplined workers for the same offence.

It also found that 53% of UK companies surveyed regularly audited outbound e-mail content while 47% have investigated a leak in the last year.

Companies’ principal worries about e-mail use are that employees could be breaking financial disclosure or corporate governance rules, could be leaking intellectual property or trade secrets, could be leaking sensitive memos or could be breaching privacy regulations.

The report highlights “the convenience and ubiquity of e-mail as a business communications tool” and acknowledges that e-mail has “exposed enterprises to a wide variety of legal, financial and regulatory risks associated with outbound email”. The report continues, “Enterprises continue to express a high level of concern about creating, managing and enforcing outbound messaging policies.”

Written on 02 June 2008 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Compliance, Surveys with Comments Off
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Email Compliance and the use of Email Filtering

Email compliance is a necessary corporate objective to ensure that email communication remains free of inappropriate materials that may damage or strain the relationships between your workforce.  Many managers see the protection against viruses, spyware and email spam as being the highest priority and they are there are a plethora of tools to enable companies to do this pretty well – as this is a mature market, but some organisations overlook content filtering.

Email filtering is a tool to allow both inbound and outbound emails to be scanned for abusive materials that are likely to break existing ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ statements and runs the risk of upsetting staff that read and are hurt or angered by the proliferation of such inappropriate content.

IT Managers have three solutions to implement email filtering: namely, a managed service where emails are scanned whilst travelling between the company and the internet; a server appliance, where emails are scanned within the company network and is automatically configured to run immediately; or a email server add-on program, which is installed, configured and manually maintained by the companies IT department and either installed on the email server or on another dedicated server .  All three solutions are viable for most modern organisations, but the managed service option has most effective content filter as its algorithm for detecting inappropriate content is constantly updated in line with real-time attacks that are happening over many of its own client base.  The effectiveness of the other two in-house solutions depend on the skills of the companies IT department and the email filtering vendors capacity to keep its scanning engine up to date with the latest rules to identify and stop the latest inappropriate content.

Written on 31 December 2007 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Compliance with No Comments
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Email monitoring: the balancing act

The introduction of email has brought many benefits to organisations. One main benefit is having the capability to monitor email use by capturing communication metrics through which companies can then act in producing usage policies and provide education to try and reduce wasted resources and improve employee productivity. However, email monitoring also has complex ramifications on the organisation and on its workforce in terms of maintaining a balance between the protection of the employer and for its employees.

In other words, getting the right balance between allowing the organisation to continue business operations and not upsetting staff by invading their privacy rights or by using over-invasive monitoring methods that may affect staff morale and performance. Careful consideration and planning by both management and staff representatives is needed to evolve corporate policies to maintain this correct balance.

Written on 24 September 2006 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Compliance with No Comments
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Key recommendations for Email Monitoring

Below is a list of 9 key recommendations for Email Monitoring:

1. Conduct an Impact Assessment to identify the business purpose for email monitoring and confine it to what is necessary to accomplish that purpose. Monitoring should only be used as necessary and not be intrusive on the employees’ email communication.

2. Develop, or modify, corporate policies that cover email use (such as the Acceptable Use Policy, Information Security Policy and/or Computer Use Policy). Make sure that all users accept these policies and they are documented.

3. Train users on current best practices of email management and use.

4. Allow management to appraise their staff regarding email use and what standards will be used to evaluate their performance.

5. Enforce and police all policies regarding email use at all times.

6. Consider which email monitoring tools are appropriate for the organisation. Only implement when supporting processes, procedures and resources are in place.

7. Frequently review and update corporate policies to ensure they fully comply with the law and regulations, and any changes thereafter.

8. Communicate any changes of policy to all email users and management.

9. Thoroughly consider the costs of excessive monitoring, such as ethics, low morale, high turnover, and potential lawsuits.

Written on 24 September 2006 by Dicontas Blog Admin under Email Compliance, Email Monitoring with No Comments
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