In Light of New Nevada Law Requiring Businesses to Encrypt Emails with Customers' Personal Information, a New Study from CertifiedMail and Osterman Research Finds that Data Privacy Faces Significant Risk
New Mandate Will Place Nevada Businesses Ahead of the Curve in
Ensuring the Safety of Customers' Confidential Information
MORRISTOWN, N.J.--(Business Wire)--
Beginning October 1, Nevada state law will require all businesses
to employ an encryption tool for any electronic transmission that
includes a customer's personal information. According to a new study
entitled "Joint Research Report: Encryption Solution Implementation
Landscape" conducted by Osterman Research on behalf of CertifiedMail,
Inc., a leading global provider of secure messaging solutions, Nevada
companies will be a step ahead when it comes to protecting customers'
personal data. The study findings indicate that, despite the
availability of easy-to-use encryption solutions, data privacy is
still being compromised for a number of reasons.
"Like Nevada, more state legislatures are now realizing that
personal information is needlessly susceptible to data theft when
simple solutions are readily available to greatly reduce this threat,"
said Kelly Mackin, COO and President of CertifiedMail, Inc. "The
consequences of not encrypting sensitive content such as financial
data, trade secrets, login credentials, information on potential
mergers and acquisitions, means this data is open for any hacker to
view and disseminate."
"Many organizations can experience loss of revenue and reputation
if their confidential communications are made public and many
organizations can lose crucial data and not even know it before it's
too late," Mackin continued. "We are at a point in time where no one
questions the validity or need for anti-virus or anti-spyware. We need
to make the next leap in educating businesses that the ability to
conduct confidential online business is readily available today, and
the state of Nevada has taken that step."
"The results of this survey clearly indicate what organizations in
Nevada should do to comply with the law and protect their confidential
data and their customers from financial and other harm," said Michael
Osterman, President, Osterman Research, Inc. "Companies need to deploy
an easy-to-use encryption capability that will allow users to encrypt
private content, even content that is only mildly sensitive. This will
ensure that organizations are protected from the potential loss of
sensitive information that could come back to harm them."
CertifiedMail and Osterman Research conducted an online survey of
205 small, mid-sized and large organizations in North America and
Europe. The mean number of employees and email users at the
organizations surveyed was 13,257 and 11,119, respectively.
Respondents came from a wide range of industries, including
manufacturing (18%), financial services (14%), government (11%) and
healthcare (8%).
Key Findings
Of the 205 enterprises surveyed:
-- 47% do not have the ability to send encrypted email directly
from their desktop.
-- Only 45% can send encrypted email manually through their email
client.
-- Only 13% can send encrypted emails automatically through some
sort of policy-based encryption capability.
-- Osterman Research found that 27% of organizations had
experienced an accidental or malicious data leak during the
previous 12 months.
-- Among those respondents that can send a manually encrypted
email, 22% found doing so somewhat difficult or difficult,
while another 44% consider sending encrypted email manually to
be "not too difficult". Much of the belief that encrypted
email is generally difficult to use arises from the legacy of
difficult-to-use, difficult-to-manage and expensive
infrastructures that were not scalable and caused other
problems. While today's encrypted email systems are
substantially easier to use than early-generation systems, the
legacy continues to hold true for many decision makers.
-- The market of frequent encrypted email users - those who would
be the primary drivers for the adoption of encrypted email in
most organizations - comprise 18% of total email users.
Occasional users, comprise another 31% of users, while
infrequent users comprise the remaining roughly one-half (51%)
of users.
-- Survey respondents indicated that if encrypting an email could
be accomplished by simply clicking a button in the email
client, "infrequent" users would likely use encryption
frequently for all types of communications, even those that
contained only moderately sensitive content. Nearly one-half
of users want to have automatic encryption capabilities.
For more information regarding CertifiedMail services, please
visit www.certifiedmail.com.
For a copy of this report, please send an email to John Angelo at
john@abelsongroup.com.
About CertifiedMail
CertifiedMail, Inc. is an award-winning provider of secure
messaging solutions. Its patented technology and open architecture
enable organizations of all sizes to securely communicate sensitive
information, meet regulatory privacy requirements, and maximize return
on investment. CertifiedMail's products are deployed globally by
governments, healthcare, financial, legal, insurance, pharmaceutical
and e-commerce companies to securely accomplish more business
electronically with less expense, less risk, less effort and more
security. Customers include Boston Scientific, Citrix Systems,
Covenant Health, Delta Dental, Rite Aid, Sovereign Bank, Sun Life
Assurance, Sutter Health and many US and foreign government agencies.
About Osterman Research:
Osterman Research was founded by Michael Osterman in 2001. Since
that time, the company has become one of the leading analyst firms in
the messaging and collaboration space, providing research, analysis,
white papers and other services to companies like Microsoft, IBM,
Google, Yahoo!, Novell, Quest Software, Hewlett Packard, Dell
MessageOne, Proofpoint and many others. The core of Osterman
Research's capabilities is its market research panel of IT
professionals and end users that are regularly surveyed on a variety
of topics related to email, instant messaging, spam, collaboration,
security, storage, archiving, data retention, compliance and other
areas. This continually updated knowledge base of information from
decision makers and influencers helps Osterman Research to understand
developments and gain insight into the trends that affect its clients.
Abelson Group for CertifiedMail
Ilona Mohacsi, 631-764-3729
ilona@abelsongroup.com
or
John Angelo, 623-792-8239
john@abelsongroup.com
Copyright Business Wire 2008
