IT departments are losing the battle to limit employees’ behavior through policy alone, a new report said.
Companies will need to take a new approach in order to empower employees while protecting corporate intellectual property and ensuring the business complies with the relevant regulations, according to a report by email management provider, Mimecast.
Information workers want to be able to use email as flexibly in the workplace as they can in their personal lives, according to the report. When they are unable to work in the way they want using corporate technology, employees are willing to work around these issues by using their personal email accounts.
The study found 79 percent of people send work emails from their personal email accounts, with 1 in 5 saying they do this on a regular basis. Awareness of the security risks this poses does not seem to prevent this behavior.
While 71 percent recognize there is an additional risk in sending work documents outside the corporate email environment, 47 percent still think it is acceptable to send work emails and documents to personal email accounts.
The limitations imposed by corporate IT seem to be a major driver for this behavior with 40 percent saying an unlimited work mailbox would make them less likely to use their personal email account for work purposes.
Moving from a “controlling” to an “empowering” environment will not by itself be enough; a technological solution needs to ensure compliant email behavior and reduce the need to ‘work around’ the limitations of corporate e-mail, according to the report
Other key findings:
• 66 percent of employees said email remains their favorite means of communication
• 40 percent said if they had an unlimited mailbox at work, they would be less likely to send work emails to personal email accounts
• Only half of email workers (54 percent) said their company has an email policy, 29 per cent said there is no email policy and 1 in 6 don’t know
• Where email policies exist, 42 percent cover email management, appropriate use of email (88 percent) and only 30 percent include issues relating to email retention
• 40 percent said there could be better communication email policy.