E-policies may not be required by law, but if you have one in place, they can keep your business out of legal trouble. E-policy is a corporate statement or set-of-rules defined by organization to protect the organization from casual or intentional abuse that could result in the release of sensitive information, IT system failures or litigation against the organization by employees or other parties.

With the growth of Internet and e-mails, it is easy for everyone to send and receive documents that are confidential or copyrighted. These actions could be damaging and may result in unwanted legal harassments. Receiving external documents containing viruses is another burning problem these days, which could harm or seriously damage your system and cause severe disruption to the organization.

Browsing the irrelevant web sites and be unproductive in their assigned role is another issue causing employers headache.

Technology is only part of the solution and can only help you enforce your policy. The responsibility for successful e-policy lies with both management and employees. Management needs to decide what is appropriate to the organization, lay down a set of rules or guidelines (a policy) and inform all employees of this. Employees need to understand the risks to the organization and ramifications of not following the procedures laid down.

No matter how small your company, here are some steps you need to take:

• Implement an e-policies addressing employee use of e-mail, the Internet, software piracy and ethical use of e-resources. That should be an integral part of the employee handbook
• Everybody in the organization should be educated about the details written in e-policy.
• Provide clear guidance, if possible give examples and templates, on what is and is not appropriate to communicate via e-mail.
• Let everybody know how much personal use of Internet and e-mail is acceptable.
• Prepare and enact a risk management policy that incorporates policies on e-mail and other electronic documents retention, deletion, passwords and filtering.
• Implement a computer and network security policy to keep hackers and other intruders out of your system.

Many of the above issues can be addressed by use of some form of technology, but only the technology can not help to enforce policies. It is no use having a police force if there are no laws for them to uphold.

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