| E-mail survey reveals disasters in the making Business e-mail is increasingly being subpoenaed for legal evidence in the US and companies that fail to manage and protect e-mail archives are opening themselves up to legal liability. E-mail is playing an increasingly common role in US workplace lawsuits and regulatory investigations. A primary source of evidence in high-profile discrimination, sexual harassment, and antitrust claims, e-mail is regularly used to bolster cases, embarrass organisations, and damage reputations. A new survey conducted by the American Management Association, The ePolicy Institute, and Clearswift, of 1,100 US companies reveals that 14 percent of respondents have been ordered by a court or regulatory body to produce employee e-mail, up from 9 percent just two years ago. In spite of growing scrutiny from courts and regulators, most employers seem to be doing a poor job of managing e-mail business records and preparing for the likelihood of e-mail discovery. Only 34 percent of employers have a written e-mail retention and deletion policy in place today. That's the same figure reported in 2001, 12 months before five Wall Street brokerages were fined $8.3 million for failing to retain e-mail. When it comes to strategically managing e-mail business risks and reducing legal liability, business has been slow to learn its lessons. "Most employers drop the ball when it comes to educating employees about e-mail risks, rules, and responsibilities," says Nancy Flynn, executive director of The ePolicy Institute. "While 75 percent of organisations have written e-mail policies in place, only 48 percent offer e-policy education to employees, and merely 27 percent offer e-mail retention/deletion training." says Flynn. While 90 percent of employers have installed software to monitor incoming and outgoing e-mail, only 19 percent are using technology to monitor internal e-mail among employees. "Management's failure to check internal e-mail is a potentially costly oversight. Off-the-cuff, casual e-mail conversations among employees are exactly the type of messages that tend to trigger lawsuits, arm prosecutors with damaging evidence, and provide the media with embarrassing real-life disaster stories. The fact that 90 percent of respondents send and receive personal e-mail at work and 66 percent of companies lack a policy for deleting nonessential messages, compounds the problem," says Flynn. Over three-quarters (76 percent) of respondents say that they have lost time in the last year due to e-mail system problems, with 35 percent estimating half a day lost, and 24 percent reporting more than two days lost. Among the workplace problems e-mail has caused: disabled computer systems (38 percent), business interruptions (34 percent), and computer viruses (33 percent). Five percent of 2003 respondents report business has been interrupted as the result of e-mail-related lawsuits. Eighty-six percent of respondents agree e-mail has made them more efficient, in spite of the fact that 92 percent receive spam mail at work. Fully 47 percent say spam constitutes more than 10 percent of all their e-mail; 7 percent report spam represents over 50 percent of all e-mail received.
•Date:
18th June 2003 •North America •Type:
Article •Topic: IT
continuity
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