How Missing Emails Can Cost Companies Millions
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How Missing Emails Can Cost Companies Millions
Emails are a vital source of business records, but many IT leaders don't feel adequately equipped to meet compliance standards and may face fines after an audit. -
Email Is the Largest Source of Business Records
The majority of respondents indicate that between 5% and 50% of all their organizations' emails meet the criteria of business records. -
Email Compliance Remains a Challenge
77% of information governance professionals say their organization faces challenges with email compliance. It is, therefore, the biggest compliance roadblock organizations face today. -
Classification Difficulties
63% of organizations indicate that it is hard to classify, store and retrieve important emails for compliance purposes. -
Emails in a Haystack
47% of respondents say finding emails is the biggest challenge when they had must procure emails as evidence. -
Suffering the Consequences
23% of information governance professionals say their organization has suffered litigation, regulatory sanction or threat of litigation because of their inability to produce emails as records. -
Financial Exposure
One-third of respondents say the potential financial exposure of being unable to procure emails could be more than $5 million. More than half say the financial impact could be at least $1 million. -
Other Exposures
In addition to the financial risk, respondents point to increased litigation risk, loss of business, and bad publicity as likely consequences associated with the inability to produce emails or other documents when needed. -
New, Business Friendly Solutions Needed
79% of respondents see the "Last mile" of compliance and information governance (the process of capturing, classifying and storing important documents and emails) as either important or very important. -
What Would Help?
76% of respondents indicate that a single view and repository of email and business documents would benefit their business.
Enterprises that fail to properly manage email for information governance purposes can face catastrophic consequences, according to a new survey. Two recent examples: Scottrade was fined $2.6 million in 2015 because it could not produce important emails for an audit. Barclays faced a $3.75 million lawsuit in 2013 over its alleged decade-long failure to properly keep electronic records, emails and instant messages. Software companies harmon.ie and Gimmal conducted the survey, "When the Last Mile of Information Governance Goes Horribly Wrong: the Risks of Failing to Treat Email as a Record." One hundred information governance leaders, 65 percent of whom work for companies with 500-plus employees and 40 percent who are at the C-level and include compliance officers, participated. "Overlooking the role of business emails in information governance and compliance programs can be a costly mistake, and many enterprises are still struggling to get employees to embrace proper record-keeping," said Yaakov Cohen, harmon.ie's CEO. "The key to avoiding document chaos and complying with increasingly strict governance directives is to make the right thing the easy thing to do."
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