Two: Why do employees turn to person email accounts? Clinton used the “convenience” defense.

We don’t suggest employers blame themselves, but sometimes turning to freemium email services is done with the best intentions. Most often it’s because consumer services are easier to use than the business equivalent. For example, email file size limits can sometimes drive people to use their personal accounts or cloud services that allow them to send larger file sizes. And poorly configured mobile devices can lead some (that’s you Hillary) to believe a personal and business email account can’t co-exist on one device.  

The solution is to make sure business communication tools are configured for maximum productivity so employees to don’t have third-party freemium services chockfull of confidential company data. After all, services such as Gmail have terms and conditions that allow for third-party searches via subpoena or equivalent, your company never agreed to those searches.

Really, there is no excuse if staff doesn’t have BYOD tech rules spelled out clearly to them.

Three: Avoid losing a costly lawsuits by making sure employees are adhering to company and industry guidelines.

In 2007, a survey by the American Management Association (AMA) found that 24 percent of employers have had email subpoenaed by courts and regulators. Missing email equals being out of compliance.   

When clearly stating employee email guidelines isn’t good enough, “Employers should take advantage of monitoring and blocking technology to battle people problems -- including the accidental and intentional misuse of computer systems and other electronic resources,” said said Nancy Flynn, executive director of The ePolicy Institute, who is quoted in the AMA report.

According the AMA report, of the 43 percent of companies that monitor e-mail, 73 use technology tools to automatically monitor email and 40 percent assign an individual to manually read and review email.

Four: Sloppy governance of company email rules - or the lack thereof - is a ticking time bomb when it comes to protecting the company’s trade secrets, confidential information and data. Of course there is the very real issue of rogue employees using email to share, leak or sell trade secrets or sensitive information about customers and employees. But also consider how prone mobile devices are lost or stolen creating a privacy and security nightmare.

The solution is an effective BYOD and mobile device management strategy that allows for remote wiping devices used by employees that regularly access sensitive company information.

Five: For employees heavily dependent on mobile devices there are a growing number of dual-mode mobile device management solutions that create a firewall between work and play. These services allow employees to log onto a personal mode where they can use their phone as they see fit. Or employees can log onto their work profile where an employer can encrypt data and lock down the phone’s features such as access to an app store or the devices camera.

Players in this market include Google owned Divide, which has a dual-persona BYOD platform called Entreproid Toggle that works on Android and iOS devices. Samsung has a dual-profile solutions for business-class smartphones that leverage its Knox security technology. VMware has its MVP services that is based on its virtualization technology that allows a handset to run two separate operating systems.

Implementing an ironclad email policy and ensuring that every employee's phone, tablet or laptop adheres to the company’s email policies can be time-consuming and costly. But consider what happened to Hillary Clinton and the price a company might have to pay to clean up after rogue email user that’s gone off reservation.