Managers are the weakest link when it comes to e-mail confidentiality and, says a survey to be released next month, their lackadaisical approach is putting the reputation of many PAs at risk.

It suggests that increased IT literacy among senior executives is leading to carelessness. The report advises that many managers are ignoring basic security devices such as encryption and password protection when exchanging confidential material.

The survey, carried out among 300 senior PAs working in 250 companies, finds that 28 per cent of the organisations polled have had to defend themselves against litigation caused by sloppy use of e-mails.

If overconfidence is already a problem among managers, it is compounded when they take unprotected files home or transfer sensitive material to mobile devices such as memory sticks and iPods, according to the study by Mesmo, an e-mail management consultancy.

It says that by distributing commercially sensitive information via e-mail without protecting it, or by asking PAs to do so on their behalf, senior managers are unwittingly breaking their own internal rules on confidentiality, as well as compromising others.

Monica Seeley, managing partner of the consultancy and a contributor to the Crème Stress Busters column, urges firms to develop new e-mail confidentiality charters that protect both PAs and their managers, as well as overall company secu- rity. Though most organisations have “acceptable user policies” for internet and e-mail use or shared in-boxes, she says, only a third provide proper guidance. Even fewer keep them up-to-date or actively enforce them.

She adds: “Having looked at e-mail behaviour in more than 250 companies, I can conclude only that there is now no such thing as confidential e-mail.”

Most senior executives are now able to use remote devices such as BlackBerrys to handle their in-boxes, but day-to-day management of e-mail is still left to support staff, who may unwittingly read mail not intended for them, the report states.

Though PAs are routinely given permission to run in-boxes while their bosses are away, the practice of sending sensitive material in open messages rather than password-protected attachments can cause problems.

The survey finds that more than 80 per cent of the PAs surveyed admitted to reading confidential e-mail in error.

Unaware of the dangers, most companies believe that putting a confidentiality notice at the bottom of an e-mail will “magically protect it from prying eyes”, even though they have no evidence of this, the report concludes.

Monica adds: “We believe that more than half of the IT-literate senior managers in Britain hand over their in-boxes to PAs when they are out of the office or in meetings and that figure rises to 75 per cent of those whom we would term ‘basic IT users’.

“Though there is nothing innately wrong with sharing an in-box with support staff, so long as there are proper guidelines and training, at present human error is creating serious breaches of security.”

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