INTERNET: policies addressing legal liability concern

UK companies are waking up to the legal risks of IT misuse by employees following a series of high-profile e-mail and Internet abuse scandals, according to research.

A survey of more than 200 large companies conducted by PolicyMatter, a security software company part-owned by regional law firm Morgan Cole, has found that the vast majority of respondents now have an up-to-date e-mail acceptable use policy (AUP) in place.

The study found that 87% of respondents, which were all companies with 250 employees or more, had implemented or revised their AUPs in the past year.

The most popular reason for doing so was to reduce legal liability (77%).

Almost a quarter said it was to protect their company's reputation.

Other reasons included avoiding costly tribunals (13%) and preventing IT damage (7%).

However, only 26% of companies thought their procedures were good enough to ensure that employees understood the policies presented to them.

Almost half of the respondents gave employees individual policy documents, while a third distributed a printed handbook.

Just 4% used e-mail to convey the policy and 15% used the firm's intranet.

Matt Fisher, marketing manager for software vendor Extend Technologies which runs PolicyMatter together with Morgan Cole, said: 'The majority of UK organisations seem to have got the message about the legal risks of Internet and e-mail misuse - at least in part.

However...

there is still a definite lack of clarity as to how best to communicate them to staff.'

Rachel Rothwell