Security For Business E-Mail
How does a business handle security for e-mails?
Most security for emails within a corporation is handled through a number of different systems. There can be software applications that will handle some of the email security - to see where your emails are going and what emails are coming in. There'll be other security systems around the storage of those emails, monitoring how long you're storing them for. There can also be software to automatically delete emails after a certain period of time. The reason companies would do this is to limit their legal liability, by not having that information on their personnel's computers.
What software do businesses use for e-mail security?
Software that's used by corporations to manage the security of e-mail at corporations can operate in a number of different ways. Most of the software packages operate around the storage of the e-mail, how long it's being stored for so that there's an automatic delete or automatic purging of those e-mails from people's folder systems, or their in box after a period of time. Some companies set corporate limits - you can only have e-mails in your in box for 90 days and then it's automatically deleted from there. Or in a hanging folder, after 15 months it's automatically deleted. Those are all security measures software packages use, and they usually go off of the creation date of an e-mail.
Can employers read my business e-mail?
Your employers can absolutely read your e-mail. All corporate e-mail is owned by the corporation. Whether its personal or whether its business, they have a record of it so you have to be very cautious about what you're putting into e-mail when you're using the corporate e-mail system.
Can anyone read business e-mail I've deleted?
When you delete an e-mail some of us think it's deleted, but in reality, it's not. It's just deleted from our deleted folder. But most computer systems, most e-mail systems, back up your deleted folder from your e-mail server to a PST folder and it's stored there. That's then backed up to tapes that eventually get put onto something like a VHS tape and stored somewhere offsite. So it's never, ever deleted. In fact, a lot of the litigation that you see in newspapers and so forth where someone is found to have sent an e-mail, they're going back and digging through people's PST folders, which are an archive folder for their deleted folders.
