Each week vnunet.com asks a different expert to give their views on recent virus and security issues, with advice, warnings and information on the latest threats.

This week Alasdair Kilgour, managing director of CommVault UK and Ireland, suggests some preventative steps for IT managers to adopt to reduce the email burden.

As soon as you arrive back from your well-deserved break, you think of the next day back at work. You might get to tell your holiday tales of adventure and fun, and maybe even show off your tan.

But all that fades away when you consider how many emails will be waiting for you. The last time you came back from holiday, how many were there? Was it 10, 150 or 1,000 messages?

And with the emails that you are copied in on, and auto-reply messages saying you're unavailable, you could end up generating and storing more emails while you're away than when you're actually there.

One in four executives take their laptop on holiday 'just in case'. Others read the recent messages when they return and skip the rest on the assumption that people will resend anything important.

While this seems like a smart move, it is risky and can have dire consequences. A slow response to a complaint from your best customer, for example, might jeopardise the relationship.

There is also the risk that you may have missed a warning email on viruses and inadvertently downloaded a nasty payload.

Organisations have finally started considering how best to manage this. IT managers have enough on their plate without suddenly having to drop everything and deliver emergency resuscitation to stop their servers from dying.

Doctors will tell you that prevention is better than cure. These are some preventative steps managers should adopt to reduce the email burden:

• Limit file sizes. Set and maintain tough limits on email account sizes.
  
  
• Promote advanced user training. Few people move beyond the basics of using email, so help them to master archiving and better management of emails.
  
  

• Move applications off the email system. Administrative tasks, such as time sheets or expenses, are better handled on corporate portals and intranets.
  
  

• Look for a tool that will manage aggressive mailbox quotas automatically. Ideally you should be able to set specific criteria, such as age of email, size of attachment, and time since message was last looked at. It should still allow the user to see and access the email should they decide to do so.
  
  

• Establish tight security policies. Reinforce to staff that you have zero tolerance on non-work related emails with attachments. The recent spectre of socially engineered viruses mean that staff may be more likely to open emails without thinking, particularly after a long break.
  
  

• Establish policies and etiquette and ensure that staff adhere to them. If they do not, restrict their storage and security privileges.
  
  

• Set policies not only for handling offensive material, but for handling that 'humorous' video clip, especially if you do not recognise its origin.
  
  

• The last is the most important. It is also the cheapest. Next time someone clutters a hundred inboxes with something of interest to only five people make the effort to tell them that this is not acceptable.
  
  

Email might be essential to the health of your business, but too much of it can be damaging and dangerous. As in life, diet and discipline are essential to maintaining the email health of your company.