It was reported in the Boston Globe and the Cincinnatti Business Courier that the company is currently under investigation regarding shareholder allegations that Gillette may have sold out to Procter & Gamble at an unacceptably low price. Galvin has called the incident an embarrassing "dog ate my homework" defense because e-mails at the company are saved on multiple machines. Normal backup mechanisms in large corporations generally make complete deletion very difficult.
In a comment on the incident, Proofpoint notes that while 74.4 percent of surveyed large corporations have adopted formal e-mail retention policies, only 18.1 percent have deployed technology to enforce such policies. The gap has created a new role for e-mail as a "de facto automated smoking gun" for corporations, making them rich targets for investigators, such as New York's Elliot Spitzer who has used e-mail evidence in all of his recent high-profile business fraud and abuse cases.
For more information, visit www.proofpoint.com.