The Specific Problem of Email

E-mail Security Concerns
E-mail Ownership
Organisational Liability

 

E-mail has revolutionized the ability of businesses to interact swiftly and, indeed, global business has embraced the e-mail system wholeheartedly.

Few organisations do not provide some form of internal electronic communications. Due to the speed at which businesses can now interact and conduct business, as well as the relative cost advantage e-mail enjoys over other means of communication, the number of new e-mail users will no doubt continue to boom.

E-mail does, however, also give organisations a degree of vulnerability. Aside from employees using it for personal correspondence, e-mail can be used to sabotage and crash organisations' networks. Forwarding viri or even simple virus hoaxes are often enough to overload a system. Using e-mail through such systems as the Internet endows senders with identity protection - the original sender of the message can be disguised or obscured. Therefore, because a sender's identity can be concealed, sensitive business information can be safely forwarded to an unauthorised address.

Consider:

·         Company employees now possess the ability to quickly disclose sensitive company materials to outside parties, increasing the opportunity for corporate espionage;

·         Company's employing a company-wide e-mail system can now be held responsible for any unethical or illegal activities conducted by employees on the e-mail system;

·         Companies must now be concerned with the repercussions of the actions of any disgruntled or rash employees. The speed with which an e-mail can be sent and distributed creates the opportunity for ill-advised communications;

·         Once an e-mail message has left a company's system, it may travel through any number of 'foreign' e-mail systems before reaching its destination. An e-mail transmission can quite easily be intercepted or compromised without the use of encryption software;

·         Without a security-enhanced e-mail system, the receiver of an e-mail message has little assurance that the e-mail is authentic. E-mail addresses can be easily 'spoofed' or cloned by a knowledgeable user;

·         Any email that is not encrypted can be read by anyone with access to it. Even encrypted email may be cracked if the encryption or key is weak enough.

E-mail can be delivered almost instantaneously anywhere the networks, computers and software exist to handle its transmission and reception. In fact, one of the emerging security problems concerning e-mail is the huge volume of space required to archive old messages. In some organisations, people are regularly asked to cull through their old e-mail messages and delete those no longer needed. In addition, some organisations will delete any old e-mail messages left on the mail server machines after a certain amount of time (e.g., one or two months).