With confidential business and personal information often attached to e-mail messages, e-mail security for insurance carriers is no longer a one-way street of incoming messages. Keeping e-mail servers free of spam definitely is one challenge faced by all IT departments. However, IT leaders also need to focus on the security of e-mail messages employees send out.

The spam issue attracts the most attention because users see their Inbox clogged with everything from great stock deals to the best knockoff watches money can buy. For a smaller insurer such as North Dakota-based Nodak Mutual Insurance Company, the goal was keeping the network secure, according to Herb Doele, Nodak's director of networking services. "We had the firewall in place, but we really didn't have a good feel for what other things might be going on," he says. "We wanted to make sure the appliances we had for security actually were doing what we thought they were doing."

Although Nodak had not budgeted for any additional security in 2005, when the carrier conducted an exposure assessment, some eyes were opened among upper management. "We felt it was something we needed to act on quickly," indicates Doele.