Enterprises "closing their eyes" to outbound email security

A survey has found that nearly two-thirds of large European businesses do not encrypt their outbound emails

Nearly two-thirds of large European businesses do not encrypt their outbound emails, despite more than one in 10 of them reporting a data breach of confidential information in the past year, according to a new survey of senior IT managers by messaging security specialist Tumbleweed.

The study also found that respondents' biggest email-related concern is “users transmitting confidential data in email”, while personal use of email came a close second. However, 60 percent of firms not encrypting emails said they did not see a business need to do so.

"In the US, people are becoming more aware of these issues because of things like the security breach notification legislation," said Soeren Bech, Tumbleweed's European business director. "But Europe is two or three years behind, and the problem is probably worse than companies think – outbound email encryption is an area people close their eyes to."

Bech added that many IT security chiefs find it difficult to justify further spending on security to the board. "If you just sent the email you're supposed to, there'd be no issue, but you can't control that, and that's a difficult issue [for them to explain]," he added.