Making the case for e-mail encryption isn't always easy

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MICHAEL OSTERMAN ON MESSAGING
08/04/05
Today's focus: Making the case for e-mail encryption isn't
always easy

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* One organization's resistance to e-mail encryption
* Links related to Messaging
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: Making the case for e-mail encryption isn't
always easy

By Michael Osterman

I received an interesting message from a member of our survey
panel in Australia, a message that really highlights the
difficulty of deploying secure and encrypted messaging in some
organizations.

Here it is:

"About a week ago, I noticed that our CEO had sent some highly
sensitive information by e-mail, and I sent a broadcast to all
staff reminding them that any e-mails sent unencrypted over the
Internet are available to anyone who wants to intercept them. As
a general rule, confidential information is accessed via our
extranet, which requires a login and has SSL encryption.

"I was later questioned about the memo at a management meeting.
The initial response was, 'We don't want PGP; we'll just use
Microsoft Word's password feature.' I then explained the reason
for calling these passwords '45-minute passwords' ([so called
because of] the time it takes to break a longish one using
software freely available on the Internet).

"I was then told that our staff would continue to send via
e-mail because it was convenient. My response was simply that
our new e-mail system makes it impossible to delete anything. My
reminder to all staff would be stored permanently there, and
that if anything was compromised by our people in the future,
the legal team of other institutions would have access to our
e-mail and could easily identify the culprit (dead silence).

"Finally I was told, ok, we obviously need to do it... perhaps
we can see how the Australian legal firms are handling this
problem, and follow their lead.

"I've spent the better part of today talking to the IT managers
of various large legal firms in Australia, and despite the fact
that I've found numerous Australian legal resources warning of
the dangers, and that the Australian government seems to have
put out recommendations of their own, I have yet to find anyone
who is using any form of encryption on their outbound e-mail.
The best I've got are people who are looking at using WinZip
passwords, and people who are investigating the technology, but
believe that it is still too immature."

This points out a couple of things. First, it's absolutely
critical for some functions within an organization to have easy
and ready access to secure e-mail for sending confidential
documents, employee information and the like. Not only is this
good practice, but also it is increasingly required by statutes
like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act,
Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and so forth. Second, some organizations
don't seem to want to address a problem before getting burned by
it; most organizations have not suffered a serious breach of
their e-mail system by hackers or snoops, and so seem loathe to
implement secure messaging to prevent a problem that they do not
perceive as sufficiently serious.

I'd like to get your thoughts on the difficulties surrounding
deployment of secure messaging - please drop me a line at
<mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com> Many thanks to the
individual who provided the basis for this article.

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_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Michael Osterman

Michael D. Osterman is the principal of Osterman Research
<http://www.ostermanresearch.com/>, a market research firm that
helps organizations understand the markets for messaging,
directory and related products and services. He can be reached
by clicking here <mailto:michael@ostermanresearch.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Ciena
NetworkWorld Special Report - The Adaptive WAN: The factors
driving WAN evolution

A combination of business and technology trends are changing the
demands on the enterprise WAN. This NetworkWorld Special Report
explores some of the key business and technology trends that are
driving and enabling the evolution of the enterprise WAN and how
the enterprise WAN can become adaptive to support these trends.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=109213
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