If it’s not hackers intent on plundering their trade secrets, phisers trolling for personal information or viruses working to wipe out payroll lists, he said they have to cope with spam eating into precious server capacity, filters that can sideline vital documents and wasted time, and lost productivity associated with finding misfiled or mistakenly deleted documents.

"Information is often a company’s most significant asset, but in too many cases it is not managed professionally," he said. "In some cases, it is not managed at all."

Although $7.2 million in losses tied to e-mail security breaches were reported to Canadian police in the opening eight month of 2005, a recent Grand and Toy office security survey found just 58 per cent of businesses have an e-mail security policy and only 20 per cent view e-mail as a potential threat to their business.

Mr. Fraser said businesses may be cavalier in their attitudes because e-mail has become ubiquitous and fleeting at the same time. Often dozens of employees have their own e-mail accounts and whether it is right or not, they take ownership of the e-mail and the information.

Unless the appropriate systems are put in place, vital information is scattered over any number of potentially distant sites, and when an employee leaves, "sometimes the information leaves with them."

"Most corporate information is no longer printed out on memos and stored in a filing cabinet somewhere. It is circulated electronically," he said. "So each time an item is deleted without an appropriate archiving system in place, part of the corporate memory is wiped out."

See the full story at The ChronicleHerald.ca