Organizations face growing email security crisis

While businesses continue to depend on email for mission-critical communication, a new report issued by email signature management specialist Exclaimer reveals they're struggling to secure and govern this most essential channel.

The survey of over 4,000 global IT leaders, including 1,000 in the US, and exposes a critical gap: while 86 percent of US IT leaders say more than half of their business communication flows through email, the infrastructure supporting it hasn't kept pace with modern security and governance demands.

The US reports some of the highest levels of email security incidents compared to other regions. 46 percent of US IT leaders cite managing external threats such as phishing and spoofing as their top security challenge, compared to 43 percent in the UK, 42 percent in Germany and 47 percent in Australia.

Regulated industries are hardest hit with 60 percent of firms in the legal sector experiencing incidents, yet only 41 percent feeling very confident in compliance. There’s a similar picture in other regulated sectors, in finance 62 percent experienced incidents with 42 percent confidence in compliance posture, in technology 59 percent experienced incidents with 39 percent confident in compliance, and in healthcare 58 percent experienced incidents with only 36 percent very confident.

"The data tells a clear story," says Cary Vidal, VP of IT and security at Exclaimer. "US businesses are leaning heavily on email for their most important communications -- contracts, compliance notifications, client interactions -- but they're managing it with outdated, manual processes that create security and consistency gaps. When every message reinforces your brand, meets compliance standards, and maintains security standards automatically, email stops being a risk to work around and becomes infrastructure you can build on."

Despite widespread agreement that professional email signatures build trust -- 86 percent of US IT leaders acknowledge this -- only 18 percent of US organizations use centralized signature management solutions. The majority still rely on employees to manage their own signatures (41 percent), manual IT processes for updates and compliance, and fragmented ownership across IT, marketing, HR, and legal teams.

The full report is available from the Exclaimer site.

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