Not Waving But Drowning

Hurray, Google and Intel have come up with a way to reduce the impact of email on our daily lives. Turn it off - for fifteen minutes at a time. What!?!?! Simple discipline is all that is needed - you don’t have to respond to email the second it arrives, or Instant Messaging for that matter - what would happen if you didn’t? Would the world stop turning, the lights dim, or any other catastrophe occur - no, of course not.

Introduction of ‘no email days’ is also being hailed as a good thing… I remember when a old colleague introduced the same thing a few years ago and was ridiculed in the press for it! What goes around, comes around.

So - let’s put email back in its place, it is a business tool - which helps us to work more effectively and efficiently - it is not ‘work’ in and of itself. Patience from the sender’s perspective must be expected, if you don’t get a reply in 5 minutes, don’t resend or phone them up to see if they have got the email… if you are a recipient, then don’t think you have to respond immediately - and don’t foster the expectation that you always will. Task switching (in this case in and out of email) destroys productivity and therefore effectiveness! Creating the additional stress of believing that you have to respond to every email ‘first’ is not good for you - or the company. Companies should create and communicate email policies which outline good email practice, perhaps that a response will be given in 24 hours, or 4 hours - you decide, but set the right expectations for everybody’s sake.

There are always exceptions, but lets bring back a little old fashioned common sense.

June 30, 2008 | Filed Under Education | Leave a Comment 

How High… How Low: Part 2

… OK, so now the story is that there was some confidential information on the stolen PC - and that it was emailed from an internal account to the one on the PC.

How many times have you emailed something either to or from a personal email account - just because it was convenient? Several I suspect. Once again, it didn’t used to be a crime to lose a laptop, but it virtually is now… similarly no-one used to mind (or notice) if email came and went from personal accounts - but that’s all changed. Technology can now be deployed to prevent this type of ‘accident’ from happening - and of course process, procedure and policy should also be changed to prevent it from occurring. Education is once again top of the list. Why is it bad to use ‘public’ email (the data’s in the clear for one thing!), why should you check the recipients (The Wrong Dave…), why does this keep happening… Time to wise up…

June 18, 2008 | Filed Under Education, Information Policy, data-loss | Leave a Comment 

The Wrong Dave

We’ve all done it - a little too quick on the ’send’ button and email has gone to the wrong person. Email systems are just trying to be helpful when they predict which email address you want based on the first few letters.. ‘d’, ‘a’, ‘v’, {return} and you inadvertently have selected the incorrect recipient. Usually it doesn’t matter but in a case this week it did. The consequences are, in this case, not too great - but imagine it was health information, or credit card details. There is technology out there (and yes Symantec has some), which looks at the content of email and can prevent them going outside the organization - or rather can check if that is what you really meant to do.

Content based classification and automated policy management is available today and can solve the problem of ‘the wrong Dave’.

May 24, 2008 | Filed Under Information Policy, data-loss | 3 Comments