August 10th, 2009
Watch what you send, post, tweet about your company; The boss may be watching
It probably goes without saying that you should be careful about what you send in e-mail, post on Facebook or write in a tweet. It could get you into hot water with the boss or, worse yet, sent straight to the unemployment line.
Case in point: the story working its way through the blogosphere this morning about the gal who forgot that she friended her boss and then publicly shared what she thought of him and the job - only to find herself publicly terminated in the comments section of her status update.
Ouch.
If you think no one is monitoring what you say, think again. According to a survey released today by e-mail security firm Proofpoint, 33 percent of U.S. companies with more than 1,000 employees have people on staff whose primary or exclusive job is to read or otherwise analyze outgoing e-mail messages. That’s up from 15 percent a year ago.
In all, 43 percent said they had investigated a breach of company information via email over the past year. Of those, 31 percent said they had terminated an employee because an e-mail breach, up from 26 percent a year ago.
But, wait. It gets better. Among the the highlights (PDF) of the report:
- 18 percent investigated the exposure of confidential company information via video or audio posted to a site such as YouTube. Eight percent said they had terminated employees for such a violation.
- 17 percent investigated leaks of company information posted on social networking sites such as Facebook. Eight percent said they had fired someone for the leak.
- 18 percent looked into leaks coming from a blog, with 9 percent reporting an employee termination for the offense.
The 6th survey by Proofpoint, a company in the business of securing e-mail and reducing leaks with its products, was conducted based on interviews with e-mail decision makers at U.S. companies.
In addition, the survey found that 22 percent of the companies surveyed investigated leaks via lost or stolen mobile devices in the last year but that more than half (51 percent) are “highly concerned” about leaks via mobile devices. Also, 13 percent looked into leaks sent via SMS text or a tweet on Twitter. 41 percent said they are “highly concerned” about the risk of information leaks via Twitter.
A free copy of the full report is available from Proofpoint.
Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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