A few months ago- we heard some disturbing news from a distinguished analyst- he believed there was widespread use of personal email in the workplace, being used for work purposes. This was driven he believed by the merging of work and personal technology and the growth of social networks.
It was a hunch, based on interviewing hundreds of IT executives, but he didn’t have any hard evidence to back it up. And we thought wouldn’t it be great to understand: IF, and WHY users are bypassing their corporate email systems?
And the findings released yesterday are startling.
We’ll be doing a deep dive in our upcoming webinar, but they have revealed that there is indeed a significant usage of personal email at work.
Our Email guru and Chief Scientist Nathaniel Borenstein commented: “With social networks and personal email a ubiquitous part of their life, the way email is used by this demographic is bleeding into the workplace. So it is not surprising that expectations for workplace technology are shifting accordingly,”
So why are people doing it?
I think there could to be two reasons- Access and Storage.
Access. Lots of companies lock their email behind VPN’s and corporate firewalls, making it hard to work remotely and access the email when you need it. Does that break the first law of usable security? Probably. Putting barriers in the way of securing your data, like arduous password policies is proven to reduce the security of your network, because people write them down, or bypass them in this case.
Wouldn’t it be much better to have emails in the corporate email client than in personal email accounts?
Storage. In the past it was impossible to provision large mailboxes at scale, so lots of companies have storage quotas which don’t reflect the greatly increased demands placed on email systems because of the growth in use and attachment sizes. I’ve heard of major companies having 150mb limits on their inboxes! I could do that in a couple of busy weeks of emailing! As can the modern workers we surveyed.
So they don’t.
They use their personal email accounts with unlimited storage to send and receive large emails and the conversation carries on from there. Totally unknown to IT or any processes that run on email, like data leak prevention, compliance or even HR.
So what can IT managers do?
Firstly- implement email anywhere. Make it easy for people to get their email wherever and whenever they want. Trust with data is a very fine line, but there are tools you can apply to corporate email systems, like Data Leak Prevention to prevent sensitive data leaking out.
Fundamentally should we stopping or enabling them to be working?
Empower your employees but protect them from the pitfalls. Personally, being an email addict I like checking my work email in the evenings and weekends. Let people like me do it! Outlook Anywhere, Outlook Web App and ActiveSync are great technologies that enables access how people want it.
The research revealed more than a third (36%) of incoming email to work inboxes is NOT work related- so it’s hardly surprising that users want access to it at all hours.
Secondly, find ways to give people the storage they need- the “unlimited inbox”. Don’t give people the reason to send work emails to personal email accounts.
And that’s backed up by the research: over half (51%) of under 25s say if they had an unlimited work mailbox they would be less likely to send work emails to personal accounts – 11 per cent higher than other age groups.
Could you make the corporate email experience an absolute joy? Can you compete with Gmail?
I think you can.
Join Nathaniel Borenstein, InfoSecurity.com and myself for a webinar to explore why Generation Gmail is putting the Enterprise at risk and what strategies you can take to prevent it.
