Internet Security Learning Center

E-mail Issues Causing Headaches

The host of security vulnerabilities threatening email today can be overwhelming to small and midsize businesses. Viruses can erase payroll records or other vital business functions, while the inundation of spam can erode the capacity of servers, according to privacy specialist David Fraser. "Information is often a company's most significant asset, but in too many cases it is not managed professionally," he said. "In some cases, it is not managed at all." The Canadian police received reports of $7.2 million in losses from email security breaches in the first eight months of 2005, though a recent survey found that only 58 percent of businesses actually have an email security policy in place, and just 20 percent regard email as a legitimate threat to their operations. Part of the cavalier attitude stems from the ubiquity of the technology, Fraser notes, explaining that information is no longer centrally managed when employees take ownership of their email accounts at work. That can mean that important corporate information is distributed over innumerable points of access, enabling both current and former employees to access and delete data that is part of the corporate memory, Fraser says. As much as 70 percent of critical business data is transmitted via email, but managing and storing that information is a major challenge, according to IronSentry's Toby Keeping. "There's a lot of emphasis on protecting email systems from external threats. People use firewalls and heavy-duty spam filters, but I think the biggest threat from email may be what is not done when it comes to managing it internally," Keeping said. While some companies keep data on tapes to record the flow of email traffic, storage is such a problem that many businesses will simply recycle the tapes after a year. Companies are beginning to look to outside contractors to archive their data as the volume expands and regulatory demands increasingly require businesses to be able to quickly produce data upon request.

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