Why Your Organization Needs to Focus on Outbound Content

Why Your Organization Need s to
Focus on Outbound Content sponsored by An Osterman Research White Paper Published May 2007 sponsored by
sponsored by Osterman Research, Inc. . P.O. Box 1058 . Black Diamond, Washington 98010-1058 Phone: +1 253 630 5839 . Fax: +1 866 842 3274 . info@ostermanresearch.com . www.ostermanresearch.com Why Your Organization Needs to Focus on Outbound Content
Why This White Paper Will Be Worth Your Time Electronic communication tools can provide enormous productivity benefits for an organization's employees and can provide distinct competitive advantages for organizations of all sizes. These tools can speed decision-making; minimize the impact of distance between employees, business partners and customers; and can help an organization to generate new business. However, electronic communication carries with it the substantial risk that employees might communicate in ways that violate corporate policies, various statutes or best practices. For example, the ease with which an email or instant message can be sent means that trade secrets or other sensitive information can inadvertently or intentionally For the most part, be sent in ways that are contrary to the best interests of an organizations in North America organization. have almost universally For the most part, organizations in North America have deployed almost universally deployed systems that protect against systems that inbound threats, such as viruses, worms and spam. Far fewer protect against organizations have deployed systems that monitor inbound threats, outbound content. However, the growing use of email and such as viruses, instant messaging, coupled with the growing variety of other worms and communication tools available to employees, makes the spam. Far fewer monitoring and management of outbound content organizations have deployed increasingly important. systems that monitor This white paper focuses on the need to monitor and outbound manage outbound content, discusses the key drivers that content. are making it necessary and discusses the steps that an organization should take to mitigate the risks it faces from employee use of communication tools. Also included in this document are brief descriptions of the companies that have co-sponsored it. There is a Growing Need to Focus on Outbound Content Management Organizations large and small are well aware of the critical need to monitor inbound communications. According to an Osterman Research survey of mid-sized and large organizations completed in March 2007, virtually 100% have deployed anti-virus systems, 94% have deployed anti-spam capabilities and 83% have deployed anti-spyware capabilities. Most organizations are on their second or later generation of both anti-virus and anti-spam systems.
© 2007 Osterman Research, Inc. Page 1 Why Your Organization Needs to Focus on Outbound Content
However, far fewer organizations have deployed systems that will monitor outbound electronic communications, either for simple post-send review of outbound content or for more proactive, pre-send review. For example, in the survey noted above, we found that 47% of North American organizations have not yet deployed an outbound content compliance solution. Many are Not Aware of the Problems One of the primary reasons that organizations have not yet deployed systems that can monitor or take specific actions on outbound content is simply that management and One of the employees are not aware of the potential risks that some leading reasons content can create, nor are they aware of the specific that organ- instances in which data breaches might occur. For izations have not example, employees will often mistakenly send confidential yet deployed data in an email - such as Social Security Numbers or other systems that can sensitive information - without realizing that the data needs monitor or take to be encrypted. There are many instances in which specific actions confidential data is buried in an email thread that is on outbound forwarded to others without being read thoroughly. A study content is simply that manage- by Pertemps found that two-thirds of email users had ment and mistakenly sent email to the wrong person, often resulting in employees are embarassment or the leak of confidential... [download for more]