Messaging News - December 2008 - (Page 27) Through Policy Management by Melisa LaBancz-Bleasdale “You need paper policies to say ‘Hey, don’t do stupid things’ but then you also need good protection against what gets sent through email.”—Michael Osterman, Osterman Research Y ou know all those papers human resources had you sign when you were hired? Do you remember the one spelling out the company’s email use policy? It might have been sandwiched in between the prior inventions checklist and the W-4 form. You don’t remember reading it? No matter, few people do. For many organizations, that piece of unread paper is all that protects its messaging systems from willful or unintentional misuse. In a survey for an upcoming report on email policy management (EPM), Osterman Research found that only 32 percent of respondents feel that they have a detailed and thorough policy in place, while 66 percent have what they consider to be a “basic” email policy, covering general email use, but little else. The final 2 percent have not gotten around to writing anything at all. “Paper or verbal policies are not effective. They provide no visibility, management oversight, or help to educate employees on what is okay and not okay to send,” says Glen Kosaka, director of Data Protection Marketing at Trend Micro. “Looking at violations related to HR policy, I’d posit that many policies are of the ‘CYA’ type, which are really just there to handle violations and appropriate remediation, such as disciplinary actions, legal actions or termination. These policies need to be in place to ensure that proper procedures are followed and to avoid any perception of arbitrary or discriminatory actions.” Kosaka believes that most companies do have some sort of email policy management (EPM) in place, especially with regard to the protection of sensitive information and compliance with government regulations. The challenge, he says, lies in policy enforcement. “Many healthcare companies verbally instruct users to not send personal health information via email, but they have no visibility into what messagingnews.com 27 http://www.messagingnews.com
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