Orchestria said today that according to its survey of US financial services firm employees, electronic communications such as e-mail, instant messenging, Webmail, blogs, chat rooms and handhelds, present a significant threat to the security of intellectual property and also risk violations of compliance with corporate and regulatory policy. Survey respondents included employees of all levels from various types of financial institutions across the industry.

“In an industry where protecting intellectual property plays a key role in the health of the business, it is troubling that more than 75 percent of the employees surveyed felt that it would be easy to send proprietary information outside of the company,” said Orchestria CEO Bo Manning. “As technology advances and more channels of communication are accessible in the work place, the potential for breaches will only increase.”

Few respondents have knowingly sent electronic communication that was in violation of policy, a finding that supports the theory that most policy breaches are due to a misunderstanding of policy rather than malicious intent. In addition, over 75 percent of survey respondents stated that they have received inappropriate communication at work.

Just over half of the respondents have had training in company policy regarding use of electronic communication and 25 percent were either unsure or noted that there was no technology in place at their company to monitor and control unstructured communication.

“The results from this survey validate the need for an effective way to monitor and control electronic communication within the firm,” said Manning.