Rating the risks

An interesting survey of 332 IT “executives” and managers by Forrester Research shows their concerns with outgoing email and IM data. Their take:

25% of outbound E-mails contain content that poses a legal, financial, or regulatory risk36% of companies employ staff to read or analyze outbound E-mail

47% intend to deploy technology for monitoring Web mail or IM traffic

70% are concerned about the use of Web-based E-mail to expose confidential data

77% say preventing intellectual-property and trade-secret leaks is their top E-mail concern

This is something that has long been terribly lax if you ask me. Think about all the web based email sent from a work computer, along with simple instant messaging, but then think on to people taking laptops home and the proliferation of USB ‘thumb-drives’ now hitting 2 Gig. These are the next real concerns, but locking down networking should be the first. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for personal privacy, but if it’s going to pose a risk to a company they should not allow it. Those comments above about staff reading and monitoring email and IM should be a wake up call; DON’T USE YOUR WORK EMAIL FOR NON WORK STUFF! My solution is to only use SSL for my connection to my home email server, along with TLS encrypted Jabber IM communication. Not that I have anything to hide…

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