Question

A company discovers that some of its proprietary information has been revealed in Internet chat rooms. The disclosure of this information results in a substantial drop in the price of the company’s shares. The company provides Internet Service Providers with the screen names of the people who posted the confidential information. It asks the ISPs to disclose the actual identities of these people. Discuss 5 key privacy principles that relate to this case and explain them in detail?

Answer 1

5 key principles are 1. Confidentiality Clauses 2. Confidentiality Training 3. Social Media policy 4. Employee monitoring 5. Provide authorized access Confidentiality Clauses This is the most basic practice followed by organizations to protect proprietary information. Confidentiality clauses in employment contracts and Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) legally bind the employees to keep the confidential information to themselves. It includes various clauses which ensure that no sensitive information is revealed, the employees do not compete with the business during or after their employment/training period or solicit other employees. Though Non-competition clauses are not enforceable in law, they are still agreed upon by the parties. It is important that the agreement specifies what is included in private confidential information, whether such clauses are applicable during or after the employment and what are the consequences of breach of the contract. This ensures that employees know what is expected from them in respect of confidentiality.

Confidentiality Training When employees reveal confidential information, it is not always intentional or malicious, the employees sometimes don't even know that they are supposed to keep it private as employees may have signed the NDA though they do not understand it. Thats why employees have to be trained by conduction induction program as a single day session explaining the NDA, rules and regulations related to confidentiality of proprietary information, intellectual property when an employees join the organization, This will ensure employees maintain confidentiality as they become aware what to share whom to share and approvals even before sharing to clients. Social Media policy Since employees are using smartphones, they can upload the proprietary information to social media apps or chat apps . So employees should not be allowed their personal smartphones while at work. Employees should be given company mail id and company should provide official chat apps by creating a user id for every employee to access ( though passwords can be changed by employees ). Employee should use company desktops or laptops only Employee monitoring Organization deploying automated monitoring tools which logs information and tracks the sites accessed by employees and what they upload or download and to whom and from whom using their official mail id provided by the organization.

Provide authorized access When employees need to access an organization's servers and VPN servers, they have to use devices in which passwords keep on generating randomly at regular intervals as a secure VPN authentication. The device will be provided for every employee which they should give to other employees to use.