The NY Times has an
interesting article about how many office workers forward work email into
their web email accounts (Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, etc). Employers are
worried about the security implications, as well as legal issues. It’s a classic case of web 2.0 consumer apps infiltrating the enterprise
(the consumerization of the enterprise, as it was labeled last year). NYTimes
writes:
“It is a battle of best intentions: productivity and convenience
pitted against security and more than a little anxiety.
Corporate techies Äî who, after all, are paid to worry Äî want strict
control over internal company communications and fear that forwarding e-mail
might expose proprietary secrets to prying eyes. Employees just want to get to
their mail quickly, wherever they are, without leaping through too many
security hoops.”
On the security side, enterprises have every right to be concerned. If you
read our coverage
of Finjan‘s latest Web Security report,
you’ll know that hackers are actively targeting – and profiting from –
vulnerabilities in web apps these days. And in the case of organizations like
hospitals (mentioned in the NYT article) there are significant privacy issues
too when patient files get forwarded on.
The NYT also writes that Google has plans for a more secure enterprise
version of Gmail later this year, but Microsoft “and other providers of
traditional internal e-mail systems” may introduce ways to block web email
use.
I’d like to do a survey of R/WW readers, who granted are a very tech-savvy
lot 🙂 Do you ever access your office email from your personal web mail
account?
