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Our Own Worst Enemy

There's an article on InformationWeek today highlighting how office workers blithely ignore rules and regulations put in place to safeguard their employers and their employers' assets. Is there really that much at risk?

C'mon, admit it. With 5 p.m. approaching swiftly, you've e-mailed yourself an important document so you could work on it later from home. No harm, no foul, right? Wrong.

If that document was a spreadsheet with confidential customer information and you sent it to your Hotmail or Yahoo e-mail address, you probably just violated your company's electronic communications rules and potentially more than that, depending on the nature of the material.

Remember that huge binder called "Employee Handbook" that you acknowledged reading on your first day of work? (I know, it's under the plant on your desk and has never seen the light of day.) It probably has an entire section devoted to electronic communications and what files, documents, and other work-related materials are allowed to leave the office and how. E-mailing sensitive sales figures to your personal e-mail account or loading it onto a flash drive or other portable storage device are probably big no-nos.

Violating such rules can potentially get you fired because, unfortunately, they are there for a reason. Public companies, especially, have a legal responsibility to protect information. That responsibility trickles down to the rank and file employees working with that information day in and day out.

The problem is it's just too easy to break the rules. In that respect we're our own worst enemies. The convenience of moving files between machines with e-mail, Flash drives, CDs, and more is tempting. For those who absolutely must take files with them when they leave the office, the best bet is to speak with a supervisor first.

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