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May 1, 2017
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Employees "blind" to data retention risks
By John Desborough
Survey Says: "Employees are 'blind' to data retention risks"
More than half of the office-based employees surveyed online in December 2016 and January 2017 by kCura, an e-discovery platform vendor, said their companies do not have written policies on data retention or personal use of work devices - or if they do, the employees were not aware of them.
kCura found that over 70 percent of the 1,000+ respondents use folders in their inbox as filing systems. In addition, 55 percent said they think there is no harm to their companies when they use a work device for personal communications.
The employee communications habits revealed by this study could put their organizations at risk for increase data retention and discovery costs in today's increasingly litigious business environment. The courts are increasingly treating all data within the enterprise as potentially discoverable.
With the rise in malware and other virus attacks via email systems, companies where staff use their inboxes as filing systems are facing tremendous potential risk of losing massive amounts of corporate knowledge if their email is hacked and there are no procedures/processes to recover this data.
It's time to take a deeper look at your information governance policies, especially related to email, and how you enforce these polices for your organization's protection. And it's probably time to provide an update to your staff on the best practices around information and data retention that will keep your data and your business safe.
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John Desborough is a Director, Consulting and Technology Solutions at MNP. He is an accomplished business solutions program manager and business transformation architect with 30+ years in the information and technology consulting domain. John has extensive background in information management and governance with both public and private sector clients on a global scale. Drop John a line to discuss this topic in more detail: [email protected]