You probably don’t examine the disclaimers at the bottom of e-mails you receive as closely as I do. They do, on occasion, give me a chuckle. Far too often, a note from a senior exec – or even a marketing, or PR contact – will end with something similar to:

"This message and any attachments are solely for the intended recipient and may contain confidential or privileged information. Any disclosure, copying, use, or distribution of the information included in this message and any attachments is prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us by reply e-mail and immediately and permanently delete this message and any attachments. Thank you."

It’s just silly (or poor business) to send content to a reporter and then enjoin him/her from actually reporting the content!

But that’s what happens with poorly administered disclaimers – they’re applied, willy-nilly, to every outgoing message. Worse, though, are organizations that rely on users to implement their own disclaimer system. You, as the harried network manager, of course, are the one who will eventually be blamed when some rookie reveals the crown jewels to a competitor! But that no longer needs to happen.

Sunbelt Software, best known for protecting your network from inbound attacks (its motto: “we keep the bad guys out!”) has just released Ninja Disclaimers, a policy-based tool allowing administrators to create automatic global and user-based disclaimers for all outbound e-mail for Exchange 2000 and 2003. The disclaimers functionality is designed to be seamlessly implemented within an organization without interrupting existing antispam and antivirus solutions.

Using the product, administrators have the ability to configure disclaimers based on specific users, groups, domains, or public folders. Ninja also prevents multiple disclaimers when replying or forwarding and gives administrators the ability to allow users within different departments to add or bypass a disclaimer on a per e-mail basis based on predefined keywords that are included in the body or subject of the e-mail. In other words, sending product information to a reporter could be flagged as one situation in which the disclaimer is removed!

Disclaimers that go out haphazardly, or require a human to review each outbound e-mail are, essentially, useless. But rules-based disclaimers can be an effective tool in protecting your organization – and recommending such a tool can be a big plus on your record at employee review time!