Companies like to be able to trust employees. This is particularly true in smaller companies, where the environment is more like a family and the founders/owners are often personal friends with the employees. In the end, though, business is business and it doesn’t mix well with personal trust–especially when it comes to protecting sensitive and confidential data.
Michael Pattison, the head of Allens Arthur Robinson’s technology law group is quoted saying, “Ultimately you trust people that you employ, so it’s depressing to find at times that the trust is breached.”
When employees leave a company–whether through firing or of their own accord–they often take proprietary and sensitive data with them out the door. Computershare is learning that lesson the hard way. An employee resigned and the company is accusing her of having stolen internal documents, emails, and possibly personal data and financial records of millions of shareholders that rely on Computershare’s global share registry.
A certain measure of trust is expected between employees and employers. If either party can’t trust the other to some extent, it creates a paranoid, hostile work environment. But, trust is a poor policy for data protection, and companies need to have tools in place to secure sensitive data even from the employees it is entrusted to.