How can you guarantee that your company’s confidential data and trade secrets haven’t walked out the door along with the departed employee?
A recent national survey, conducted by Symantec, found that over 59 percent of employees who quit, were laid off or terminated, admitted to stealing company data, and 67 percent admitted to using their former employer’s confidential data to find a new job. The survey included employees working in corporate information technology, finance and accounting, sales, marketing and communication, and Human Resources. The most commonly stolen types of information were e-mail lists, employee records and client information.
Shockingly, 24 percent of the participants indicated that they still had access to the company’s computer network after leaving the company, and 20 percent of that group still had network access over a week after their employment ended. As if these findings aren’t alarming enough, the survey found that most companies do not have the consistent employee exit strategy in place, nor do they have the technology in place to be able to determine if intentional data theft occurred.
Employees taking this confidential information with them had various excuses, including “everyone does it”, “the information may be helpful in the future”, or “they can’t trace it back to me”.
Or can they?
eDiscovery Solutions can assist you with a number of measures if you suspect that your company’s confidential data have been compromised. We will inspect your company’s desktops, laptops and hard drives and determine if any of the company’s sensitive data have been downloaded to a thumb drive, external hard drive, CD or DVD, or transferred to a personal email account. As part of the process, we can also inspect the departed employees portable electronic devices, such as iPhones, Blackberries or PDAs and present you with our findings.
The cost of trade secret theft is estimated at a staggering 300 billion a year, were in most cases the miscreant was either an employee or a business partner. The earlier we begin the digital investigation, the more information we can uncover and the less time the disgruntled employee has to cover his tracks. Whether you’re a small firm, or a large corporation, it is vital to engage a professional digital forensics team immediately after there’s any suspicion of your proprietary data being compromised.