UK banking firms in breach of FSA email regulations

UK IT directors are still largely unprepared for the technology implications of the raft of compliance regulations such as Basel II, Sarbanes Oxley (Sox) and International Accounting Standards.

A survey of IT directors from 100 UK-based organisations found almost half (47 per cent) would not be able to retrieve a company email more than three years old.

The breakdown shows that for the financial services sector, 25 per cent of companies can not retrieve emails after three years, putting them in breach of Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations. UK financial services companies are required by the FSA to store all business emails for up to six years.

Over half (53 per cent) of the respondents across all sectors were also unable to confirm whether they had a policy for how long company emails should be stored. More worryingly 37 per cent said they had no email storage policy at all.

The research was carried out by Vanson Bourne for storage vendor Adaptec, which is hoping to cash as companies rush to meet compliance deadlines.

Russ Johnson, European managing director at Adaptec, told silicon.com that many firms will be caught out because there is a lack of co-ordination around compliance planning.

"There's a discussion at the C-level [board level] but it is not involving IT managers. IT managers are going to be caught flat-footed," he said.

He warned that firms need to allow enough time to get compliant.

"You think about how long it takes to build the infrastructure. A lot of companies dismiss Sox as an American problem. They need to be addressing these issues now."