Sleuthing Your Own Employees

Are you sure your very own employees are not divulging non-public information on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn? There are certainly potential issues relating to the appropriateness of social networking while on-the-job (addressed in an earlier article on this blog), but more and more employers have a presence on these trendy sites and in many instances, encourage it. However, there may need to be protections for your business from your very own employees according to a Blogger News Network, April 6, 2010 article on the topic. (http://www.bloggernews.net/124226)
Really -- who needs thieves, when our own employees can be duped by users of crafty social networking sites to share logins and passwords to our company network. The above-referenced article describes one test of such a fact pattern which found nearly half of all the employees tested fell for the demands of a well-crafted, illegitimate duplicate site of their employer’s.
It’s nevertheless hard to put too much blame on the vulnerable employees – the duplicate site looked like very credible outreach from their HR department. And a recent Time Magazine article reported 70% of US HR officers reported utilizing social networking sites to screen employees. (“Social Networking Sites Can Lead to Legal Pitfalls,” http://www.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2010/04/05/focus3.html?b=1270440000^3132331) This begs the point that internal policies for any workplace can only help give guidance in this situation.
Because we can’t expect the social networking sites to do our sleuthing for us! As the Blogger News Network story suggests, employers ought best appoint a site administrator to oversee work-related online employee interfacing for the time being. And the best legal defense remains the best offensive strategy and taking extra measures to protect access to company websites and having a corporate policy/training on the topic just makes sense.
Sue B Martines, J.D.

Its Not always about the money...

Sometimes you need to sit back and wait for things to develop. Acting to fast or rushing to a conclusion can sometimes get you in trouble or worse those you are teaching. If you are going to be in the "teacher" role, you must me fact based. Its ok to be proactive but that is not the same as reckless.

If this legislation is passed in the Senate it will change the landscape of the industry. I say, common sense seems to be prevailing.

Full Article can be found at - http://www.scmagazineus.com

The U.S. House of Representatives this week unanimously passed legislation that would exempt certain small organizations from complying with the Red Flags Rules.
The rules, developed in accordance with the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act of 2003 (FACTA), require financial institutions and other organizations classified as “creditors” to develop programs to identify, detect and respond to indications of identity theft. A bill passed this week would amend FACTA and exclude health care, accounting and legal practices with 20 or fewer employees from having to comply with the regulations, set to be enforced starting next month.

Also, the bill would create a provision to enable other businesses to apply for exemption. To be exempt from complying with the regulation, the bill stipulates that a business would have to meet one of the following guidelines: It must know all of its customers or clients individually; it must only perform services in or around the residences of its customers; or it must not have experienced incidents of identity theft, and identity theft must be rare for businesses of its type.

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Without proper identity theft coverage you may feel naked when you become a victim.