Email remains a major vector of enterprise data loss

A new survey of some 261 U.S. enterprises with more than 1,000 employees has found that email remains the number one source of data loss risks. Indeed, 35 percent of companies say they investigated the exposure of confidential information via this medium in the last 12 months. Another 20 percent say they have terminated an employee for violating company email policies while half have disciplined an employee.

Enterprises are taking steps to lower their risk profiles. Thirty-seven percent of the surveyed organizations say they employ staffers to monitor the content of outbound emails for content that poses possible "legal, financial and regulatory" risks, while almost half say they perform regular audit of (outgoing) email content.

In a nutshell, anxiety over potential corporate data loss is no longer under the purview of the IT manager or hapless system administrator. Gary Steele, CEO of Proofpoint, noted the increasing attention being paid to potential data loss, "We're seeing C-level executives and management paying attention as data loss becomes a very real, public threat to companies."

For more on this story:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this press release at Markewire

Related Articles:
Corporate America's dumbest security bungles
Lessons from the AT&T/iPad user email address leak
U.S. data breach = $204 per lost record
Another stolen laptop, another breach