Poor email management puts businesses in legal limbo

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 29 Jul 2003 at 15:03

Research carried out for Veritas has found that 11 per cent of CIOs and IT managers surveyed said they could only recover email that is a week or less old - potential putting them in hot water should they face a request to retrieve email for legal reasons.

Peter A. Gerr, senior research analyst, Enterprise Storage Group, said: 'By failing to have adequate procedures and systems in place to ensure appropriate retention and security mandates are met, both IT organisations and business leaders are unnecessarily exposing themselves to legal ramifications which could place their business at risk.'

Just 15 per cent said they knew of government regulations that required them to store email. But businesses facing a request from the police under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act for communications information can't claim ignorance as an excuse.

Five per cent of those surveyed said they had already experienced email and attachments being used for or against them as legal evidence, and 39 per cent said they could conceive of this happening. Yet although 92 per cent say they have recovery systems in place, 46 per cent admitted they would have difficulties in retrieving any specific email.

Additionally, only 18 per cent back up email more than a year old, and 30 per cent don't even bother with emails more than a month in the past.

Further evidence of email's fragile position as the prime means of business communications comes with the fact that only 4 per cent of IT managers said they could get their email systems back on their feet within an hour, and 39 per cent had no idea how long it would take. Yet 24 hours of email downtime would be enough to put their jobs on the line, according to alnost one fifth of those polled.

The survey polled medium to large businesses across the US and EMEA.