Monday, August 15, 2005

In the Air Tonight

Sometimes things seem to come together, or maybe something is in the air. This weekend I had a long conversation about email security, and this morning I find a quite excellent (though rambling) rant from Jeff over at HIPAA Blog:

"That's what gets people going, though. Encryption of emails. I've pooh-poohed it because of the relative risk question, but there's another reason to pooh-pooh it: you don't encrypt your phone messages, do you? Is there a greater risk of your emails being intercepted than your phone calls being intercepted? Not much of one; presumably phone circuits are more closely controlled than internet circuits (you never know what route your email will take, really), but wouldn't someone have to be involved in criminal conduct as great as wiretapping to intercept your email?"

And there is this from USNews:

"Compliance with rules like HIPAA (which governs the use and release of medical information) prompted Rochester, N.Y.-based Sutherland Global Services to install E-mail security software this year. The outsourcing firm often handles sensitive information like credit cards and medical records; company heads wanted to ensure that this information remained private. Sutherland now has a system in place that checks outgoing E-mail for key phrases or words, putting a quarantine on any message that may contain private information."

And from way back in 1999, an article from CNN with a quote from Jeff LePage (who by the way didn't hire me a few years back for a pretty cool sounding job--- but who seemed like a decent guy nonetheless---which would have had the added bonus of letting me work with an IT guy who is quoted in national publications) on keeping track of what your email is used for.

"I didn't really realize how much of a problem I had until I started using (monitoring software)," said Jeff LePage, director of MIS at American Fast Freight Inc. in Kent, Wash.
At American Fast Freight, a year after putting monitoring software in place, the software is now capturing only two or three inappropriate e-mails per week from the company's 330 employees -- requiring only a quick once-per-week check, LePage said."

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