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.”
Proofpoint’s 4th annual study of outbound email and content security issues (http://www.proofpoint.com/outbound), found that outbound email and other electronic communication protocols continue to grow as a source of risk for companies.Proofpoint’s survey of 308 email decision-makers at large U.S. companies shows expanding concern over sensitive information leaving enterprises through outbound email and other electronic communications channels.
The study found that 32.1% of surveyed companies with 1,000 or more employees hire staff to read or analyse the contents of outbound email. 38.8% of larger companies surveyed (those with more than 20,000 employees) employ staff for this purpose. Additionally, 16.9% of companies surveyed employ staff whose primary or exclusive job responsibility is to read or otherwise analyse email content.
Nearly 28% have terminated employees for email policy violations; 20% have disciplined employees for improper use of blogs/message boards; 14% for social network violations; 11% for improper use of media sharing sites.
Email remains a primary source of information leakage, which can result in regulatory compliance violations, legal problems and loss of competitive position. Respondents estimated that nearly 20% of all outbound email poses a legal, regulatory or financial risk.
More than a third of surveyed companies investigated a suspected email leak of confidential or proprietary information in the past 12 months.
Source: Proofpoint
Gartner’s latest ‘magic quadrant’ 2006 report on “E-mail Security Boundary” rates the following vendors in the top leaders/visionaries quadrant:
- Postini (#1 in completeness of vision)
- Secure Computing
- IronPort Systems
- MessageLabs
- Symantec
- Microsoft (#1 in ability to execute)
Other leaders are:
- Proofpoint
- BorderWare Technologies
- Tumbleweed Communications
- SonicWALL
- Clearswift
- Marshal
Source: Garner, 2006
Written on 01 April 2007
by Dicontas Blog Admin under
Surveys
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Tagged with BorderWare, clearswift, email-security, Gartner, IronPort, magic-quadrant, marshall, MessageLabs, microsoft, postini, Proofpoint, secure-computing, Sonicwall, Symantec, tumbleweed
On 4 January 2007, Cisco announced a definitive agreement to acquire IronPort Systems, a provider of enterprise messaging security products.
The IronPort acquisition will allow Cisco to move into the fast-growing e-mail security market, which is currently valued at approximately $850 million and growing at a rate of approximately 40% annually. The key technology value that Cisco will receive is a strategic foundation on which to begin building a security infrastructure for unified communications, including e-mail.
Gartner Analysis : The consolidation in the e-mail security market is now almost complete. Other vendors will find it difficult to compete with industry leaders Cisco, Microsoft and Symantec in the enterprise market. IBM and (potentially) Juniper Networks are the only other major vendors that have a strategic interest in this market, though BorderWare and Proofpoint remain as respected independent players. Gartner believes the two remaining service providers, MessageLabs and Postini, will likely be acquired by telecom providers in their respective markets.
Extracted from Gartner – IronPort Buy Will Make Cisco a Major E-Mail Security Player
Written on 09 January 2007
by Dicontas Blog Admin under
News
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Tagged with BorderWare, Cisco, email-security, email_filtering, IBM, IronPort, Juniper-Networks, market-growth, MessageLabs, microsoft, postini, Proofpoint, Symantec