Over third of businesses employ email snoopers
Survey shows 70 per cent of companies have disciplined staff over email violations
Over a third (38 per cent) of blue-chip companies in the UK hire dedicated staff to read employee email as security concerns shift from external threats to internal breaches, research shows.
A third of UK businesses have fired an employee and over 70 per cent have disciplined staff for violating email policies in the last 12 months.
A survey by messaging security specialist Proofpointalso found that one in five outbound emails carries legal, financial or regulatory risks. The most common violation is content deemed ‘adult, obscene or potentially offensive’ in nature.
Mark Hughes, European managing director at Proofpoint, believes that most companies have contained external security threats and are now focused on the damage outbound security leaks can cause.
Over a third (34 per cent) of companies said their business was impacted by the exposure of sensitive or embarrassing information in the last year.
Hughes says: ‘Outbound security breaches can have disastrous effects on a company’s branding – last year Paris Hilton’s phone records were released to the media by a T-mobile employee basically telling the world that a customer’s personal details are not safe with T-mobile.’
Hughes adds most companies use manual auditing which cannot monitor the enormous volumes of outbound communication and warns many more email violations go undetected.
Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum, agrees there is more suspicion from companies fearful of employee behaviour impacting business. He says: ‘The legality of monitoring personal emails is grey although it’s generally accepted if employees are pre-warned’.
Titterington sees automated blocking of outbound mail as the future security choice of most companies. It carries less privacy implications, cuts costs and is more effective than manual monitoring. He says: ‘Early technology was too simple minded but it’s now very effective as long as companies accept it’s not absolute.’
What do you think? Email us at: [email protected]
Further reading: