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Companies monitor outbound e-mails to meet regulations, avoid exposure

HIPAA Weekly Advisor, July 19, 2004

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Thirty-one percent of companies with 1,000 or more employees employ at least one staff member to monitor outgoing e-mail, according to an omnibus survey conducted by Forrester Consulting. An additional 10% reported they plan to add this protection in the future.

Three-quarters of respondents reported they felt the most concern about the risk of confidential memos and intellectual property leaving their organizations via e-mail. Violating HIPAA regulations garnered the lowest level of concern, with only 50% of respondents citing this as a worry. However, in organizations with 20,000 employees or more, the number of respondents "concerned" or "very concerned" about HIPAA violations jumped to 59%.

Survey respondents rated their concern about internal e-mail policies, HIPAA regulations, personal and financial privacy regulations, financial disclosure, valuable IP/trade secrets, confidential memos, and inappropriate content and attachments.

Nearly 150 companies with 1,000 or more employees responded to this survey. Respondents consisted of senior finance executives such as CEOs and CFOs, IT executives, IT directors or managers, directors or managers of messaging/e-mail systems, and IT staff. Go to software vendor Proofpoint's Web site to download a copy of the survey.

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