"According to a new survey conducted by Forrester Consulting and sponsored by Proofpoint Inc., a company that makes anti-spam and filtering software, more than 43 percent of corporations with more than 20,000 employees employ staff to monitor and read outbound e-mail," Internetnews.com's Erin Joyce reports. "The survey of 140 [US] corporate decision-makers found that companies' concern about employees leaking sensitive information via e-mail ranked as the biggest reason behind the snooping policy...
"The Forrester/Proofpoint survey also found that about 30 percent of all respondent companies rely on staff to monitor outbound e-mail content. And the larger the organization, the more prevalent is the practice...
"Staggering stats? Forrester thought so, but not how you may think. In its summary and conclusions, the research firm's consulting group suggested the results are a testament to 'the widespread failure of current content-scanning technologies to stop the leak of intellectual property, confidential memos and embarrassing information from the enterprise.' ...[Less] than 12 percent of companies report that they have deployed technology for detecting intellectual property breaches in outbound e-mail. The most common technique used for detecting these e-mails remains physical review by hired staff..."