Careless keystrokes: More firms to monitor staff email

A new study has found that 63 per cent of corporations with 1,000 or more employees either employ or plan to employ staff to read or otherwise analyse outbound email.

The report, released on Monday by email security specialist Proofpoint, said 36.1 per cent of companies employ staff to monitor email today, with another 26.5 per cent saying they intend to employ such staff in the future.

In companies with more than 20,000 employees, this practice is even more common, according to the survey, which involved 332 technology decision-makers at large US companies. Forty percent of those large companies employ staff to monitor email today, and an additional 32 per cent plan to employ such staff in the future.

According to the study, companies are concerned about ensuring email isn't used to leak company trade secrets or other intellectual property, and that emails comply with financial disclosure regulations. Another factor is preventing confidential internal memos from getting zapped outside the company, according to the report.

The study comes amid a rise in workplace monitoring. The number of employers who monitor the amount of time employees spend on the phone and track the numbers called has jumped to 51 per cent, up from nine percent in 2001, according to a study released last month by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute.

That earlier study also found that 51 per cent of the companies surveyed use video monitoring to counter theft, violence and sabotage, up from 33 per cent in 2001. In addition, it said companies "also keep an eye on email, with 55 per cent retaining and reviewing messages".

Though liability and regulatory issues may be convincing companies to peek in on their employees, such surveillance raises privacy concerns. Employers can monitor workers to a greater degree these days, thanks to newer technologies such as keystroke-logging software and satellite global positioning systems that can track a mobile phone user's whereabouts.

According to the new Proofpoint survey, more than one in three companies investigated a suspected email leak of confidential information in the last 12 months. And, it said, more than one in four companies have fired an employee for violating email policies in the last 12 months.

Ed Frauenheim writes for CNET News.com