Employees leak secrets on blogs

Forget industrial espionage or corporate rats. Your competitive advantage might be available on the Internet care of your “trusted” employees. The recession and access technology seem to be a bad combination as disgruntled employees can easily leak confidential information over the Internet.

Tech player Yahoo! found itself in a sticky position as instructions to manager handling layoffs were published online. Direct quotes lifted from the instructions like “15 minutes maximum” and “don’t engage in small talk” were published on the blog.

In a recent survey, 14% of 586 U.S. employees admitted they had sent confidential or potentially embarrassing company emails to outsiders. The survey was conducted by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, a consulting firm.

Employers have been spending quite a bit on plugging possible holes. Limited Internet access during work and installing tracking software. Employees argue that this is a breach of privacy, however, the strong argument for companies is that they do own the infrastructure, and employees are not supposed to do personal business during office hours.

With the other ways to access the Internet, what else can an employer do?

Source: WSJ

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