Thursday, May 24, 2007

Shedding some light on information security

Network World

Unified Communications




Network World's Unified Communications Newsletter, 05/24/07

Shedding some light on information security

By Michael Osterman

MessageGate recently published a report entitled ‘Reshaping Information Security: The Convergence of Content & Security in Corporate Messaging.’ The report focused on understanding the impact that growing quantities of e-mail and deficiencies in end-user security are having on organizations’ ability to manage their messaging-related data. Here are a few highlights from this very interesting report:

* E-mail storage is ‘out of control’ in many organizations, a finding that Osterman Research has consistently uncovered in its own research.

* People are a critical factor in managing the security of information systems and the content they manage. Decision-makers are actually more concerned about how their employees use technology than they are about the technology itself.

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* E-mail will expand into unified communications and will include a broad array of communications media, making management of content and systems more difficult. However, none of the respondents in the roundtable discussions conducted for the MessageGate report was desirous of ‘turning voice mails into e-mails.’

* IT departments and information security functions are increasingly called upon to become expert in data retention, e-discovery and legal issues, since internal demand for these skills is increasing significantly.

* Companies should develop committees or other internal groups whose focus is security, content management and other issues related to e-discovery, data retention and similar issues. Being proactive in this way can make a company better suited to address key governance issues early on that they will eventually have to face anyway.

* It is essential to understand what information assets an organization has, where these assets are stored and the individuals or groups that have access to them.

* Although organizations are becoming better able to respond to e-mail-related e-discovery requests, systems do not exist in many organizations that will allow them easy access to this content.

The full report is available for download from the MessageGate Web site.


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Contact the author:

For webinars or research on messaging, or to join the Osterman Research market research survey panel, go here. Osterman Research helps organizations understand the markets for messaging and directory related offerings. To e-mail Michael, click here.



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