Each week vnunet.com asks a different expert to give their views on recent virus and security issues, with advice, warnings and information on the latest threats.

This week Alasdair Kilgour, managing director of CommVault UK and Ireland, suggests some preventative steps for IT managers to adopt to reduce the email burden.

As soon as you arrive back from your well-deserved break, you think of the next day back at work. You might get to tell your holiday tales of adventure and fun, and maybe even show off your tan.

But all that fades away when you consider how many emails will be waiting for you. The last time you came back from holiday, how many were there? Was it 10, 150 or 1,000 messages?

And with the emails that you are copied in on, and auto-reply messages saying you're unavailable, you could end up generating and storing more emails while you're away than when you're actually there.

One in four executives take their laptop on holiday 'just in case'. Others read the recent messages when they return and skip the rest on the assumption that people will resend anything important.

While this seems like a smart move, it is risky and can have dire consequences. A slow response to a complaint from your best customer, for example, might jeopardise the relationship.

There is also the risk that you may have missed a warning email on viruses and inadvertently downloaded a nasty payload.

Organisations have finally started considering how best to manage this. IT managers have enough on their plate without suddenly having to drop everything and deliver emergency resuscitation to stop their servers from dying.

Doctors will tell you that prevention is better than cure. These are some preventative steps managers should adopt to reduce the email burden:

Email might be essential to the health of your business, but too much of it can be damaging and dangerous. As in life, diet and discipline are essential to maintaining the email health of your company.