"Privacy is the right to be let alone." This is a clarifying response from Judge Thomas Cooley, a contemporary of Louis Brandeis.

"Real privacy as we know it is fleeting," is the depressing premise of Carole Lane, author of Naked in Cyberspace: How to Find Personal Information Online.

These three quotes capture the essence of the current debate facing corporate security professionals. Though monitoring the content of employee email and other electronic corporate communications is imperative to preventing computer crime, doing so may also challenge an individual's right to privacy.

But what's more important: corporate security or individual rights? Info security can include the monitoring of email to prevent the leak of proprietary information and to catch illegal, racist and discriminatory messages before they can do harm. For individuals concerned about privacy, this can appear to be an infringement of their rights. How does a company balance corporate security with the "right to privacy"?

Though it might come as a surprise to Brandeis and Cooley, a recent study reports that the majority of employees are willing to forfeit these rights. Two thirds of the respondents to a 1998 industry study conducted by the International Computer Security Association (ICSA) report that "end-users support information security needs."

The respondents of the ICSA survey were readers of Information Security, the publication of the ICSA. And where the end-user seems supportive of online security, according to the survey, upper management appears ecstatic. Eighty six percent of the respondents said upper management backs security needs, and one quarter of organizations plan to work with security budgets exceeding $500,000 next year -- a 73% increase over current levels. In addition, the number of organizations spending over $1 million will double, and those spending less than $50,000 will decrease by 10%.

The enthusiasm for information security, however, is not shared by everyone. Privacy is still a national pursuit. According to the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a recent poll suggests that 83% of Americans are "very concerned about their privacy." And the Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that "The protection of privacy is one of the greatest challenges facing our country today." In fact, though a majority of respondents to the survey may claim their end-users support information security, many employees simply do not want their email monitored.