Mitigating The Risks Of Messaging By Maurene Caplan Grey, Grey Consulting

In any single day, millions of e-mail messages are sent and received within and outside of the organization – and, near daily, the press and broadcast media details the latest scandal to be uncovered through an e-mail message.

In most cases, the scandal arises as a result of a financial-transaction wrongdoing – in which those involved get caught. The evidence is often found in e-mail message conversations.

Protecting the organization from the damage that non-compliance can cause is paramount in today's regulatory-ridden business environment. Many organizations start by securing e-mail for compliance purposes. We agree it is a necessary step – but a tactical one that pursues only the "e-mail-as-evidence" pain point. Forward-thinking organizations are only at the cusp of realizing the magnitude of this quandary. The risks are not married solely to business regulations or to e-mail as a messaging medium.

Due to stringent SEC and NASD regulations on managing e-mail messages and instant messaging, US financial service providers have been at the forefront of adopting compliance practices. Other vertical industries have been equally impacted. For example within the US healthcare community, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) set the standards for securing the privacy of patient information.

Many argue that, though the cost of becoming compliant is high, the upside is wellstructured accountability, improved organizational creditability and customer protection. Capitalizing on that backdrop, vendors across-the-board have declared that they have the solution. In the case of e-mail messaging and instant messaging management, the solution may take the form of policy-based filtering, categorizing, indexing, archiving, document management or record management software – which turns the unstructured message body into a "record." Outsourcers can host all or part of the solution. Professional services firms can design the implementation of the technical and business processes. The e-mail messaging and instant messaging compliance market is undergoing tremendous consolidation; however, no vendor today can provide a holistic, integrated solution.