Before you fire an employee, watch out!

A survey says that many employees tend to take confidential data with them when they leave a company and this could have bad repercussions

Companies and employees alike tend to face difficult times when the going gets bad. While employees worry about how they will pay the next month's rent, companies usually wonder how they will answer their shareholders when the next meeting comes up.

But now, companies are increasingly facing a new danger protecting data from employees whom they are forced to layoff. This was revealed by a recent survey conducted by Symantec and the Ponemon Institute, a firm that conducts privacy and information management research. The study, which concerned people who lost jobs in 2008, says that 59 per cent of ex-employees admitted to stealing confidential company information like customer contact lists.

Old issue

The problem is nothing new. In September 2006 Hummingbird's Information Management Survey of 1,385 business people found 29 per cent of company directors admitted to stealing confidential corporate information when they left a company. The survey also found that 24 per cent of the thefts concerned use of memory sticks or MP3 players to steal data, while 18 per cent involved email.

You would assume that surveys like the one above would convince companies to tighten data security, but you would be wrong. In another survey, commissioned by enterprise rights management company Liquid Machines and released in May 2007, nearly half of professionals from across a wide range of industries admitted they had taken data with them when they changed jobs. Interestingly, some people were worried that email would be monitored and so worked around it the old way 39 per cent of workers printed documents and then took them with them. But not everybody does this. The survey by Symantec and Ponemon found that 53 per cent of respondents downloaded information onto a CD or DVD, while 42 per cent used a USB drive. Some 38 per cent sent attachments to a personal e-mail account.

Getting worse

And the number of layoffs are growing faster and faster. In the US, Forbes has a 'Layoff Tracker' that lists the number of layoffs at America's 500 largest public companies from 1st November 2008. As of 20 February 2009, this figure stood at 480,674. In India too the situation is grim and labour minister Oscar Fernandes has recently told parliament that five lakh jobs have been lost in the country in OND 2008. And every employee getting fired represents another possible chance of a data breach.

Companies should watch out otherwise, they may end up losing more than just their employees.

Three tips to protect yourself
>>Have a backup plan: If data is properly backed up, then the danger of an employee wiping out that information is minimised.
>>Restrict access: If you must layoff employees, do it in the morning when they come in and do it before they have access to the computer. This way, they can't steal data or delete any critical information.
>>Change Passwords: Before a layoff, change the passwords of the said employee's official e-mail ID and computer so that he cannot access any confidential information.

QUICK TAKE
>>Employees who quit typically take data with them
>>This is especially true of employees who leave on a bad note
>>Companies need to take urgent steps to protect their data