Legal Liability Issues

There are a number of areas in which the improper use of company email and World Wide Web access can result in legal liability for the company:

Sexual/Racial Harassment

Organizational email is a business tool. Anything sent from a corporate email address is effectively written on electronic company letterhead. As a result, any views, quotes, or discussions made via company email can be representative of the company and legally binding.

The casual use of profanity in business email (as in any other documented communication) has obvious implications for a business's reputation. Such emails have had more concrete repercussions as well. There have been several lawsuits involving sexual harassment in the workplace, based on lewd comments sent by email. In many cases the organization has been held responsible for not controlling their email content so as to avoid offensive exposure to employees.

• In 1995, the Chevron Corporation paid $2.2 million to four female employees to settle a lawsuit in which the women claimed they were sexually harassed with e-mail jokes.
• In October 1999, Edward D. Jones & Co, USA, took action against 60 employees after a member of staff complained about an email with offensive content. The brokerage fired 19 workers and disciplined 41 others.
• In 1999 a financial company was sued by a female employee who discovered a printout of a pornographic email on a department printer.

MailMarshal and Postini Perimeter Manager can serve as an internet filter to control messages containing profanity and other offensive words in email and attachments, based on an organization's acceptable usage policy. Offending messages can be copied, deleted, blocked, or quarantined. Words can be identified within the context of the message. This allows a tolerance level for certain amounts of colorful language. Specific words can be assigned scores that contribute to a message's overall score. Only messages exceeding a certain total will be acted on.

Inappropriate Web use also has potential legal liability implications. Offensive images displayed on a screen may count as harassment, and such images are easy to find on the Web. WebMarshal software and the Postini Perimeter Manager for Web managed service allow you to limit employee Web browsing to sites and file types which meet company policy.

Viruses, Spam and Mail Relaying

Many companies have suffered the humiliation and damage to company reputation of being shut down by denial of service attacks, being used as a spam relay, and infecting other companies with email viruses. Malicious email campaigns have caused millions of dollars in damage and lost productivity. As more prominent organizations put solutions in place to avoid down time and liability, hackers are turning to smaller businesses where the pickings are easier. This is not just a big business issue, but one that opens up all types of businesses to liability in preventing security breaches.

MailMarshal and Postini Perimeter Manager  possess the capability to block both incoming and outgoing virus infected emails, to identify and block likely spam messages, to stop relay attempts, and to reduce the impact of Denial of Service (DOS) attacks.

Confidential Information and Privacy

The loss of confidential data can severely effect the reputation and image of businesses which have been entrusted with sensitive information. Such businesses include hospitals with patient records, accountancy firms with financial information, engineering services with design plans, and others. Information must be readily available for business purposes, yet many businesses can be held legally accountable for losing this information or for sending it over the Internet in an open, unencrypted format.

MailMarshal and Postini Perimeter Manager  can prevent the unauthorized distribution of confidential documents and databases. Outbound email checking can ensuring that sensitive information is not accidentally or intentionally released. MailMarshal Secure offers optional S/MIME encryption capabilities for secure, private email communications.

Legal Disclaimers and Usage Policies

Organizations are always at risk that employees representing them may make inappropriate comments, thus giving a false image of the company. Defamation, racist comments, political views, offensive material, profanity all of these facets of employee indiscretion can have serious legal and reputation implications for the entire business.

The mere presence of an Internet Usage Policy and enforcement software has been enough to cover some businesses against legal liability. Conversely the lack of a policy has sometimes proved expensive. Consider the following cases:

• January 2000: Nissan Motor Company. Two employees at Nissan who were fired for sending sexually explicit e-mail messages subsequently sued for unfair dismissal, claiming violation of privacy. However, Nissan won the lawsuit because it had an e-mail policy in place that prohibited the use of company owned computer systems for non-company business.
• January 1999: Distribution firm BG paid out a $161,000 libel settlement to rival Transco, after a BG senior manager sent a defamatory e-mail to Transco staff wrongly suggesting that Exoteric Gas Solutions (created by BG) had misused confidential information from Transco.
• Norwich Union Insurance were forced into an out of court settlement of 450,000 for alleged defamation by e-mail against a competitor, Western Provident Association.

Appending legal disclaimers can reduce legal liability with respect to employee comments made through company email. MailMarshal and Postini Perimeter Manager  have comprehensive message stamping capabilities for editing and appending legal disclaimers, as well as branding messages, notifications, and so on. Various stamps can be specified for users, groups, departments or company wide.