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This is not about politics; it is not about red or blue.
It is also not about DoD classified documents – that is just a very visible instance of the problem.
First we had an ex-president who kept highly classified documents at his home and resisted returning them.
Then we had a current president who also had classified documents at his house.
And a former vice-president who also had classified documents that he wasn’t supposed to have.
Now we are learning of a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who pleaded guilty to illegally having classified documents – some labelled Top Secret/ACCM (typically related to SCI (special comparted information) or SAP (Special Access) programs.
It is not like Lt. Col. Birchum didn’t know any better. He is a former Air Force intelligence officer. The documents were found on a thumb drive, a Dell computer, a hard drive in his temporary quarters overseas and paper documents in a storage pod at his home in Tampa.
Clearly we have a problem with managing classified documents because this is likely the tip of the iceberg. There have been so many other stories over the years like these.
According to CBS, about half of employees took company documents to their next employer and most employees see nothing wrong with this.
Even when not leaving, the majority of employees put company information at risk by transferring confidential company information to personal devices, personal computers, personal email and personal cloud services.
After all, what could go wrong?
This happens every day. Most employers don’t even know that employees are sharing company intellectual property with competitors. After all, typically, when an employee leaves, they don’t join a completely different industry that has no use for the employee’s knowledge.
And the FTC’s proposed ban on non-competes will only make this a bigger issue.
Many you don’t care about your sensitive financial, marketing, client and personnel data. If this true, just post it on Google and be done with it. Oh, that doesn’t seem like a good idea? I didn’t think so.
If this “concerns” you, please contact us. There are no silver bullets to solve this, but there are a lot of things that you can do to reduce the risk.