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Email Recovery: Don’t rely on your backup
posted on 03/10/2003

With each passing day we hear of more and more examples where an email has been a critical part of an evidence trail. Have you stopped to think about what the implications would be for your organisation should you be required to produce email as evidence. Your first reaction will probably be “It’s in the backup”. You may be in for a shock. In most organisations the primary role of the email backup is to enable an operational recovery in the event of a system failure. The critical word here is “operational”. The IT department will be protecting the operational integrity of the email infrastructure. They will be taking regular backups so that if necessary they can recover an operational system to a specific point in time. Recovery of an email trail across a period of time is a completely different problem. Let us consider two scenarios 1) Does The Email Exist In Your System? A person in your organisation sends a defamatory email to a competitor and then immediately deletes the copy... [more]

Are You Keeping Data Legally?
posted on 03/10/2003

Just as viruses and hacks have elevated IT security on the business agenda, recent high-profile corporate fraud cases have fast-tracked data management from a mundane back-office process to an essential part of risk management strategy. Businesses today must comply with new local and European regulations to prove they are acting in a legal, honest and decent way. IT and storage administrators will be required to take a greater role in administering this. According to Cyberspace Lawyer, 93 per cent of all business documents are now created electronically and only 30 per cent are ever printed. The collapse of energy giant Enron, the Microsoft antitrust case and the investigation into Merrill Lynch’s recommendations of Internet stocks all required that original electronic data such as documents used in preparing financial statements, advice to investors and internal emails were dredged up. These cases offer a salient reminder that today’s businesses must treat electronic data with the ... [more]

Corporate dishonesty
posted on 30/09/2003

The higher you go up the business ladder, the more likely you are to encounter corporate dishonesty. The murky waters can soon engulf the unwary. It's an everyday dilemma that all honest business people hope will never happen to them. Someone with a position of power in an organisation that your company does business with takes you for a quiet drink and asks for a 'backhander'. Perhaps the request comes from someone who exercises control over a big contract. The future jobs of half your workforce could rest on the successful outcome. It becomes clear that the customer is not playing games. He wants tens, even hundreds of thousands of pounds and suggests when, where and how he'd like paying. What do you do? The answer, in black and white terms, is that you must stick to ethical principles. Obtaining money through deception is a crime and facilitating it makes you an accessory to crime. The problem is that in some business sectors and overseas territories these st... [more]

Security Efforts for Data In Motion Should Be Put to Rest
posted on 29/09/2003

Everybody knows that it is easier to hit a stationary target than a fast-moving target. Yet, an enormous amount of financial and development resources are being used to encrypt data in motion. Any smart hacker, can tell you that data at rest is that much easier to decode and transmit to a second location, whether the perpetrator has physical access to the data being accessed or is utilising remote network-based access tools. While nearly everybody has come to the rightful conclusion that the Internet has massively enabled hacking with regards to corporate data, the actual risks are still largely unknown and efforts to secure data seem to be targeted in the wrong places - often with complex and costly encryption schemes that serve little purpose. For example, only a few months ago, I was watching a popular technology show on cable television that explained how Ethernet traffic broadcasts all communications between two computers to all of the nearby computers on the adjoining networ... [more]

Creating Trustworthy Archives
posted on 29/09/2003

The efficient and secure storage of business records is fundamental to the insurance industry. Since its conception, organisations and individuals providing insurance services have needed to retain critical records to ensure the successful operation of their business. Today, this simple business imperative remains, but the introduction of government and industry regulations creates even greater pressure on organisations. Not only are they forced to retain specific business records but also they must be able to defend the authenticity of this information. Failure to do so can have very serious consequences in the form of fines and litigation, which can have devastating financial and political consequences. Recent, high visibility, court cases have graphically demonstrated just how damaging this can be to the wallet and reputation of an organisation. As part of the financial services industry, insurance agencies are subject to regulation by the FSA and its industry specific agenci... [more]

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