By IT-Observer Staff
Thursday, 25 August 2005 15:32 EST

Businesses are ignoring an obvious security flaw in their outbound email management policies, according to findings of a new research. More than half of businesses do not take any actions to protect against improper sending of confidential emails.

The research commissioned by Sendmail and Osterman Research, reveals that over 70 percent of businesses do not enforce scanning the content of outbound email. Moreover, nearly quarter of respondents have any measures in place against the improper sending of confidential data, whilst 75 percent of businesses implement virus prevention solution.

“The irony is that while much media attention is focused on malicious inbound email, this has been at the detriment of outbound. In other words, it’s been about keeping the bad stuff out, but there’s a real danger that they can’t keep the good data in,” said Thorgeir Einarsson, vice-president international sales managing director, EMEA at Sendmail.

“What’s needed is a more holistic approach to email security management – one which not only embraces the needs of IT infrastructure, but also protects and enforces the business content security policies, and as such reaches from the gateway to the intranet and back again,” he concluded.