Mailing Groups

Control Mailing Groups and Distribution Lists

Uncontrolled access to mailing groups and distribution lists creates a security risk for confidential information, decreases employee productivity, increase storage costs, and can turn into an enterprise-wide conduit for airing personal grievances.

Serious cases of inappropriate email broadcasts to mailing groups, such as leaks of salary information and customer lists, or complaints about management policies, present a corporate risk. Even well-intended messages, such as the ubiquitous “food in the conference room” and “latest baby pictures” email blasts, can waste time, clog mailboxes and consume valuable archive storage resources.

The following email best practices can help reduce the problem without disrupting business processes:

• Limit the use of each mailing group and distribution list to authorized personnel.  Authorization may be limited by job level, department, job function or to specific senders.
• Prevent the use of Reply-to-All when a distribution list is included, unless the sender is authorized to send to the list.
• Set expiration dates for each mailing group or distribution list at the outset and periodically monitor groups for unused lists.  Lists should be retired when not needed.
• Each mailing group should have an owner responsible for keeping it up to date and for purging it when it is no longer needed.

Permessa Email Control! with Permessa Email Policy Enforcer automatically makes best practice recommendations for the use of mailing groups and distribution lists. It provides continuous monitoring of the email system and it can also enforce the mailing group and distribution list email policies you select.