Commercialisation of cyber-crime, growing complexity of threats and digitization of information have all served to make anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spy and other email filtering applications indispensable for today’s organisations. Reflecting this, IT managers and chief technology officers (CTOs) have begun to increase their spending on content security application, thereby ensuring the healthy growth of the North American content security market.
New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, North American Content Security Market - Investment Analysis and Growth Opportunities, reveals that revenues in this market totalled $2.19 billion in 2005, and can reach $4.28 billion in 2012.
“We expect compliance and policy management solutions to be protecting 110 million mailboxes worldwide by year end 2006, up 78 percent from 2005,” writes Masha Khmartseva, principal analyst of the Radicati Group, in a recent report. By 2010, the firm expects to see 517 mailboxes protected worldwide.
According to the Radicati report, the worldwide market for compliance and policy management solutions will be “over $505 million by the end of 2006, up 38 percent from 2005.” By 2010, the annual revenues will reach $1.7 billion.
The Radicati Group has put the 2006 worldwide revenue figure for outsourced email archiving at $248 million; but by 2009, the firm predicts that figure will be $1.3 billion.
The prospect of saving money in litigation searches, avoiding fines and lawsuits, could tip the scales in favor of outsourcing. For many firms, adding compliance and email security products on top of archiving could mean added cost and complexity, particularly given the costs of filtering software, which can be $25 per seat. (See Stop That Email!.)
End Result? If services function as promised, expect to see outsourcing grow in popularity as an email management option.
Recent studies indicate that when customers or potential customers contact an online organisation, 80% prefer communicating by email over phone and over 50% will not do business with a company if they do not receive an adequate response to their email within 24 hours. The average response time to a customer email inquiry is 72 hours.
Most online organisations communicate regularly with customers and clients by email, but few provide a level of email customer service that satisfies their customers. While email service standards are low, the benefits of communicating via email are palpable:
- Cost - an email conversation generally costs 75% less than a phone conversation.
- Time - the time it takes to respond to an email is significantly less than a phone call. Email also allows both the customer and your company representative to multi-task, responding to email messages while attending to other matters.
- History - email allows for the easy tracking and retrieval of email conversations, which ensures accountability and allows for organisational benefits derived from the sharing of customer history and knowledge.
Source: deerfield.com (providers of email management systems)
60% of companies monitor external (incoming and outgoing) e-mail as a way to protect against intruders, leaks, and offensive content. However, only 27% monitor internal messages (employee to employee messages), but that number is steadily growing as more and more companies are facing e-mail harassment suits.
Why Are Employees monitoring your email?
In its landmark 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that employers are responsible for harassment — even if they are not aware that it is going on. Specifically, employers may be held liable if the employer “should have known of the conduct and fails to take immediate and appropriate corrective action.” (Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton)
The “should have known” standard is particularly troublesome when harassment involves email. How can a company know about every email message from its employees when thousands of messages are sent every day? Which messages should the company know about?
The liability for not knowing about email harassment can be substantial.
The good news is that the U.S. Supreme Court said that penalties and fines could be lessened if the companies exercised “reasonable care” to prevent and correct harassment. (Burlington Industries v. Ellerth and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton)
Many harassment suits are now focused on whether companies exercised “reasonable care.” Many companies compound their risk by the mistakes they make when handling email. Fortunately, there are steps that you can take - click on link below to view report.
Source: 7 Mistakes You Can Avoid With Email Harassment Cases - Inboxer
Postini, the mail filtering company has seen a 59 per cent spike in spam from September to November 2006. Unwanted email is currently 91 per cent of all email, and over the past 12 months the daily volume of spam rose by 120 per cent. Postini also saw a dramatic increase in overall email traffic with 10 billion more connections in October than in September.