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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/im/0,39024995,39125893,00.htm

Leader: Do office gossips undermine compliance?
Is there more at risk than just man-hours?

By silicon.com

Published: Friday 12 November 2004

Sometimes being an IT director - or any senior exec - must feel a lot like banging your head against a brick wall.

And the biggest cause of such resultant headaches is almost undoubtedly users - your colleagues who insist on undermining your best efforts through a combination of naivety, stupidity and recklessness.

"A joke you say, I'll click on that attachment."

Or, perhaps: "Compliance you say, I'll just download Yahoo! instant messenger onto my work laptop and connect from home."

The biggest problem with users is just that, they are users - using email and IM almost to exclusion of everything else at times.

Research out from MetaGroup claims 57 per cent of employees use work IM applications for personal communications. Gut reaction and well-honed skills of guesstimation would suggest the figure should perhaps be even higher.

Sarbanes-Oxley legislation kicks in on Monday. From now on many companies will be required to create audit trails of all electronic communications but such a figure still gives an impression of businesses whose communication networks are unmonitored, somewhat out of control and regularly abused.

Of course a little tolerance goes a long way and many companies believe reining in their staff's personal communication, in days of tougher conditions and longer hours would make for an unhappy and unproductive workforce.

But any tolerance shown on the part of employers certainly won't be matched by shareholders should a company be unlucky enough to be undone by a lax approach to monitoring the use of such resources.

IM in particular represents the quickest and least secure route in and out of a network - with the possible exception of physical theft/removal - which means such an indication of unrestricted use should raise a few eyebrows to say the least.

As with all things of this nature however it takes somebody to take the fall before others sit up and take note. Will it be your company?