Manufacturers wide open to corporate IP theft
1 min read
With the debate over corporate IP (intellectual property) apparently being passed between Mclaren and Ferrari, IP theft is back on the agenda for CIOs.
Worried IT managers note that, since many UK employees enjoy free online use in the workplace, businesses can easily fall victim to knowledge theft.
Only recently, UK Information Commissioner Richard Thomas identified Orange, Barclays and NatWest as three of the latest to have experienced data protection breaches this year alone.
Also, according to the Department of Trade and Industry’s Information Security Breaches Survey 2006, inappropriate web and email usage is the second largest cause of reported security incidents.
Further, 52% of organisations report misuse of business Internet resources – the two most common themes being access to inappropriate websites (41%) and excessive web surfing (36%). Indeed, research by search engine Foundem.com found that the average British worker spends 90 minutes a day surfing the web at work for personal purposes.
However, email and web management specialist Email Systems points to services, such as its own, that allow IT administrators to filter Internet usage and to encrypt email from desktop-to-desktop.
Its Web Filtering service provides a first layer of defence against malware, including viruses and spyware, according to Email Systems’ CEO Neil Hammerton – while also enabling users to define and control usage policies.
Also, whereas many encryption services render email content scanning useless – thereby introducing an additional threat through unseen data theft – Email Systems’ service offers a central management facility that combines scanning and encryption, so that all content meets corporate policies.
Says Hammerton: “With at least 40% of emails received during business hours being non work-related, this has led to a dramatic increase in the requirement for IP safeguards. Unfortunately, more and more employees are using work time to surf the Internet, which is both a drain on corporate resources and a risk in terms of the potential for information theft.”
Email Systems’ was recently awarded the highest grading – Check Mark Premium – by West Coast Labs.
