If you’ve been to the doctor lately, you’ve probably signed a notice about the changes in privacy laws. Doctors, hospitals, the dentist – they’re all required to notify you about HIPAA. They can’t leave messages on your phone with information about your test results, or anything confidential, unless you give them permission in writing. These new laws don’t just extend to messages left on answering machines. You can’t email certain information unless you’re sending it securely. For me, in the staffing industry, we can’t send emails to people outside the company containing confidential client information, or social security numbers, or anything like that. If we do so, and we’re caught, we’d have to pay huge fines.

A lot of companies are turning to software solutions to make sure they comply with HIPAA, GLBA, SOX, and other requirements. No one wants to see our CEO end up in jail because of something preventable like email compliance. BorderWare is one such company providing software that bundles email security, compliance, and anti-spam into one package. Their software even has the ability to scan attachments sent via email – a good thing for my company as we receive (and send) a lot of resumes as attachments.