***** Where Have All the Emails Gone? By David Gewirtz; published by ZATZ Publishing, www.zatz.com [1] (Web); 236 pages; $19.95.

Where Have All the Emails Gone? is computer scientist/journalist David Gewirtz’s account of how as many as 5 million e-mails vanished from White House accounts and backups in 2007.

Looking beyond the case’s heated political context, Gewirtz examines the White House’s use of separate systems for official and political e-mail as well as the executive branch’s policies and capabilities for protection and storage of its e-mail communications, the preservation of which is required by law.

While using extreme, and unlikely, hypotheticals to illustrate potential disasters relating to e-mail problems within the executive branch, Gewirtz’s point is well made: There is no other civilian organization in which the integrity and security of e-mail communications is more important than that of the Office of the President of the United States. Drawing on the expertise of his publishing group, Gewirtz argues that the government must elevate those systems and policies and their implementation up to truly professional standards that will adequately protect the national interest.

The book could easily have become a politically motivated hack job. Gewirtz, however, avoids that trap and stays focused on the technical issues. He writes a balanced account and criticizes the IT staffs of several past administrations from both political parties as well as the government regulation requiring separate e-mail accounts for official and political business, which he says may have exacerbated the problem.

In addition to being of general interest, this book raises issues that most security professionals would be well-advised to consider. While failures in these areas in private industry are not going to unleash Armageddon, they still have serious consequences, such as the loss of proprietary information and the loss of confidence of investors and regulators in the capabilities of companies that have these lapses.

Gewirtz holds the reader’s interest by laying out his findings in a manner that shows both his passion for the subject matter and the potential consequences of what he found. He tells an engaging, true story that will provide both security and IT professionals much food for thought.

Reviewer: Brent Campbell is an information system security manager and the security operations support manager for Computer Sciences Corp. in Falls Church, Virginia. He is a member of ASIS’s Information Technology Security Council.

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