Johannesburg, 26 Nov 2008
Mimecast SA and ITWeb are running a 10-question survey to learn how South African businesses secure and manage e-mail.
According to Mimecast, e-mail is becoming more relevant and subject to legislation and compliance requirements, and companies need to assess their levels of e-mail security.
Mimecast says, on average, a user receives 156 e-mails a day and spends over a third of each working day on their e-mail.
Barry Gill, Mimecast product development manager, notes South African corporates use technology in much the same way as the rest of the world and in some cases are even more advanced.
“South African businesses tend to be ahead of the world in many ways as they tend to be more holistic in the way they manage IT processes,” explains Gill. “It's critical that companies implement data provision, e-mail archiving and corporate governance and compliance. In SA, we haven't had big legislation on that, but [corporates] are getting systems in place to protect themselves, their brand and to retain data.
“The survey is to test how different SA is from the UK and US. We are running the survey to validate what our market is doing and to see if we are on the right track.”
According to Gill, the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act recognises e-mails as being a formal medium of doing business and settling agreements, meaning companies can make legal agreements and transactions via their e-mail.
However, Gill believes South African legislation is not doing enough to address flaws in e-mail governance and compliance. “Eighty percent of corporate intellectual property resides within an e-mail knowledge base. In terms of the ECT Act, organisations need to understand the value of concluding transactions via e-mail. The Act currently protects the end-user and doesn't take businesses and technologies into account.
“E-mail is a common form of communication, which is why so many business processes have been developed around it and many companies don't realise the full consequences of securing and controlling information. The survey hopes to understand how companies are securing and regulating their e-mail data.”
Gill says results of Mimecast's previous international surveys show the bulk of information lost via e-mail is mostly accidental, and companies are seeing value in e-mail archiving, content security and have a recovery process.
He claims 2009 will see widespread adoption of technologies such as cloud computing, virtualisation and in particular, software as a service. Gill predicts 25% of all software sold will be delivered as a service by 2012.
“E-mail archiving is a costly and complex system to put in place and we are seeing a significant increase in the number of organisations looking for solutions and technologies in e-mail management.”
Gill notes that 2009 is going to be an interesting time, especially for telecommunications companies. “We will see Seacom's cables being deployed, international transit links will be cheaper and VANs are now freely allowed to self-provide. Overall telecommunications costs will come down as more competition comes in and the market will start to self-regulate itself by increasing fair pricing.”
The results of the survey are expected to be released in early December. Interested parties can take part in the survey by clicking here.
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