Email Retention and Discovery: Is Your Business Compliant?

by Stephanie Faris on Monday, March 16 6:00

The recent frenzy over Hillary Clinton s missing emails has highlighted an important issue in data retention and recovery. If your employees are conducting business on personal devices, what is your business s responsibility when it comes to e-discovery? Server movers frequently encounter businesses with users who use personal devices for work use.

Regulating such use can be very difficult for businesses. A user can usually pull up a web browser from a mobile device or home PC and access work email with no problem. Employees also sometimes email files to their personal addresses to perform work after hours or for access on the go. All of this poses problems for security administrators, but it also presents a problem when it comes to legal issues.

Personal Use

Some businesses have tried setting policies for personal device use but policing such behaviors can prove challenging. Even when businesses issue mobile devices for business use, employees can still gravitate to their personal devices, especially on weekends and vacations when they ve left work smartphones at home.

Often a server moving company will recommend that employers alert their workers of the dangers of using personal devices for work use. If legal issues arise, an employee s personal device might be confiscated with no reimbursement if such a device was used for related work purposes. If the device is lost or stolen, it will also be immediately wiped by server administrators, removing all of an employee s personal photos, music, and apps. Realizing this, many employees will reconsider their behavior.

Other Dangers

The primary concern for businesses in this area is that employee personal devices are outside of their control. IT movers caution that an employee likely doesn t have encryption on his personal devices and may be using an email service with security holes. This means confidential work documents could end up in the wrong hands. Lock codes are also a problem on personal devices.

IT relocation specialists have found that the biggest issue is that IT administrators have no control over personal smartphones and tablets. They usually can t reasonably require lock codes be used on those devices and even if they can, they would have difficulty enforcing it.

An Alternative

One alternative data center relocation specialists have noticed is the division of personal and work devices using the latest technology. A partnership between BlackBerry and Android allows IT administrators to keep work information separate from personal information on the same device. This will allow businesses to secure only work-related information on a user s personal Android device or issue a work device that can be used for personal, as well. With the right BlackBerry software in place at the server level, this technology can be implemented on iOS devices, as well.

Mobile technology continues to complicate issues for businesses. If your business allows BYOD in the workplace, IT movers recommend that you look into options that will keep your work information secure without taking away employees rights to work the way they want to work. By informing employees of the risks personal device use poses in the enterprise, businesses may be able to convince workers to limit professional use to work devices only.