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Box 1354 St. Louis, MO 63188 Voice: 314-771-0200 Fax: 314-771-0300 To submit news, contact: editor@slfp.com To advertise, contact: advertising@slfp.com Survey Shows Almost 70 Per Cent of Employee Email May Pose a Threat to Businesses ST. LOUIS, (PRNewswire), November 20, 2005 - Before you hit send, you may want to think twice about the content of your email. Chances are if it is a joke, gossip, or even information about your company, you could be putting yourself -- and your company -- at risk. A new survey released today, conducted by Harris Interactive(R) for Fortiva, shows that 68 per cent of U.S. employees who use email at work have sent or received email via their work email account that could place their company at risk. Despite this, 92 per cent of these employees do not believe they have ever sent a risky email. Together these statistics indicate a substantial discrepancy between employees' perceived and actual risks. Fortiva commissioned Harris Interactive, best known for The Harris Poll(R), to look at email usage among employees. The survey, which examined the email habits of over 1,000 individuals who use email at work, uncovered a number of issues that raise concerns for businesses -- both in the way employees are using and storing their corporate email. According to the results, a majority of employees who use email at work (61 per cent) admit they have used email at work for personal use. Results also show that nearly half (48 per cent) say they have sent or received joke emails, funny pictures/movies, funny stories of a questionable tone (e.g., racy/sexual content, politically incorrect), while one in five (22 per cent) say they have sent or received a password or log-in information via email. When shared through email, this type of content could pose significant risks to businesses, either from a possible security breach or employee-driven lawsuits. Respondents were given a list of nine email categories that could be considered medium to high risk; only 32 per cent said they had never sent or received email in any of those categories. "As email is being used increasingly as evidence in lawsuits, it is very important for organizations to educate their staff on what is and isn't acceptable in a workplace communication," said Dennis Kennedy, an information technology lawyer and legal technology consultant based in St. Louis, Missouri. "Those organizations that don't implement effective policies and procedures, train their people, and enforce policies for email are at serious risk of facing both future lawsuits and unhappy results in those lawsuits. These statistics reinforce the fact that businesses need to do a better job of reducing their risk by communicating their policies more effectively with employees and backing up that communication with training and well-designed technology solutions," Kennedy added. While a majority of employees (73%) who use email at work are aware of corporate email policies, less than half (46 per cent) say they "always" adhere to the policy. This statistic suggests a lack of understanding among employees of the importance of an email policy. The way that employees are storing their email may be of even more cause for concern than the content of those messages. While 41 per cent of employees who use email would prefer to keep important emails indefinitely, most businesses place limits on the amount of email that can be stored. Such storage limitations may be leading to practices that could jeopardize information security. The survey reports that half of employees who use email at work (51 per cent) have saved email outside the corporate network, putting valuable and sometimes confidential information at risk of falling into the wrong hands. For organizations that are not archiving their email, this practice of saving data outside the controls of the corporate network presents an even greater risk, particularly in a litigation situation. "It's a fact -- employees are using your corporate network to send personal emails, from jokes to gossip to confidential information -- and every business should be taking the necessary steps to protect that data from ending up in the wrong hands, or leading to a lawsuit," said Paul Chen, CEO of Fortiva Inc. "If email from your organization is presented as evidence in a trial, and you don't have a copy of that email, you may be unprepared to defend yourself. Worse still, email that could support your claim of innocence could also be unavailable, ultimately leading to a forced settlement or guilty finding. A reliable email archiving solution can help businesses avoid these situations and save millions of dollars in fines and settlements, not to mention salvaging their corporate credibility." An email archiving solution can enforce policies and ensure that evidentiary-quality copies of all corporate email are available in the event of legal or regulatory investigations. Fortiva's managed email archiving solution was designed to help businesses automatically enforce email policies, meet regulatory compliance rules, and quickly and easily meet e-discovery requests. The Fortiva solution also allows employees to access their own email archives, including deleted email, from their corporate mailbox. This feature can help reduce the burden on email servers, while eliminating the need for employees to store copies of email outside the corporate network. Additional findings from the survey include (among U.S. employed adults who use email at work): Those who earn over $75K a year are more likely to save work-related email outside of the company's network (62 per cent vs. 41 per cent of employees who earn less than $50K a year) 73 per cent admit to knowing their company has an email policy; yet less than half (46 per cent) admit to always making sure they comply with policy before sending a note 9 per cent of U.S. adult employees who use email at work have used company email to submit their resume to another company One-fifth of employees (22 per cent) have sent personal details to HR including Social Security numbers, salary details, or medical information via email Archived: Missouri Unemployment Remains at Lowest Level in Four Years Small Employers Offer More Flexibility; Large Employers Offer More Benefits Offsite Workers Feel Less Connected With Employers Missouri Unemployment Rate Hits Four Year Low Missouri Career Centers Responding to Hurricane Katrina Evacuees Travel Industry Jobs Impacted by Hurricane Katrina Major Re-organization Designed to Create Jobs in Missouri Maintaining Health Insurance Is More Important Than Pay Increase Missouri Labor Market Shows Improvement Mortgage Rates Rise Following Employment Report National Job Quality is Declining 18- to 34-Year-Olds, Low Earners Tops Among Job-Hoppers 'Class of 9/11' Finds Patriotism Is Not Enough to Work for Government Laptops, Not Autos, Tempt Today's Job Seekers Survey Highlights Mothers as Ideal Workplace Leaders Worker's Compensation Reform Bills Protect Missouri Jobs Employment Rebounds in St. Louis Missouri Quality Jobs Act to Create Jobs, Spur Economic Growth Smurfit-Stone Anticipates Job Growth at New Headquarters in St. Louis County Worker Confidence Drops Sharply in February Employment Market Minority-Owned Businesses Boost Local Economies in Tight Job Market Workers Rate Bosses Highly, But Say They Can Do the Job Better U.S. Households Led by Single Mothers and Displaced Homemakers on the Rise Job Market Continues Growth As Worker's Confidence Levels Increase    The Saint Louis Front Page is owned and maintained by the Moore Design Group for the sole purpose of disseminating news and information about the Metropolitan Saint Louis area. 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