Email is used for
communicating sensitive information, corporate
intellectual property and transferring sensitive
documents. Without control: Employees frequently
send sensitive information and documents unprotected
across the internet to coworkers and business partners.
An added risk is the
email sitting unprotected on a company's servers or an
employee's workstation where it can be viewed or
accessed by unauthorized individuals. While many email
programs have security features built in, they are not
commonly used due to maintenance requirements and their
complexity.
The growth of the Internet has provided unprecedented
opportunities for interaction and the sharing of data
between corporations, their partners and their
customers. However, until recently these advantages have
come with a great element of risk to the integrity of
this information. Since confidentiality has been at risk
during email communications, the Federal Government has
mandated that all publicly traded companies must keep
all electronic transactions secure.
SafetySend satisfies these tough security standards
for electronic data interchange; during its transmission
and while in storage and is ideal for e-Statements and
e-Bills.
The threat of
emails containing malicious or offensive content
Emails carrying sensitive information, or unsolicited
mail messages sent out by corporate users are not the
only problem a company has to tackle with regard to
employees' email use. Emails sent by staff containing
racist, sexist or other offensive material could prove
equally troublesome, not to mention embarrassing - and
expensive!
This factor hit the headlines during the much-publicized
antitrust case against Microsoft Corp., when the US
government presented as evidence the contents of emails
written by top Microsoft executives describing plans to
topple competitors. On a similar note, Chevron recently
had to pay $2.2 million to settle a lawsuit resulting
from an email message bearing sexist contents.
Protect yourself
against the threat of information leaks.
Organizations often fail to acknowledge that there is a
greater risk of crucial data being stolen from within
the company rather than from outside.
Various studies have shown how employees use email to
send out confidential corporate information. Be it
because they are disgruntled and revengeful, or because
they fail to realize the potentially harmful impact of
such a practice, employees use email to share sensitive
data that was officially intended to remain in-house.
FBI statistics, for example, reveal that among Fortune
500 companies, most data thefts in 1998 were by internal
users. Again, research results carried in PC Week in
March 1999 report that, out of 800 workers surveyed,
21-31% admitted to sending confidential information -
like financial or product data - to recipients outside
the company by email. Ten per cent of those surveyed
disclosed that they had received email containing
company-confidential information.
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