An interesting survey by Orchestra, maker of network policy monitoring tools for enterprise computing environments, revealed that those of us working on Wall St. are more aware that we’re being watched (and read) than the folks who work outside of the geographical area:

A total of 300 people working in Wall Street and the City were surveyed by Orchestria, a company which makes software to enforce employees to use network resources in accordance with company policy and international regulations.

The research discovered that more than 60 per cent of respondents in New York thought that it was right that their employer should monitor their email. By contrast, only 38 per cent in London supported their firm’s right to monitor email.

I don’t know what kind of training they do in London, but anyone who has ever worked on the sell side can probably attest to hours of online training applets on the issue of compliance. I suspect that despite how boring these lessons have been, one can hardly fail to be surprised that monitoring is going on in all forms.

That won’t stop some of us (not me of course) from trying to dodge such roadblocks:

However, New Yorkers are more likely to try to dodge email monitoring. Sixty per cent admitted that they had sent something that they ‘didn’t want their employer to know about’ using webmail.

This compared to 42 per cent of London respondents. Or maybe City workers are better liars when it comes to market surveys.

Are NY’ers better liars? I’ll leave that question for another day…