The recession, combined with new technology, is sparking new skirmishes between employers and employees over leaks of sensitive or confidential information.
In recent months, Yahoo Inc. and several big law firms have been surprised by disclosures of pending layoffs or internal memos detailing cost cuts on blogs or Internet news sites. In Yahoo's case, its instructions to managers conducting layoffs -- "15 minutes maximum," "don't engage in small talk" -- were published by the blog Valleywag.com. Yahoo declined to comment.
In June, leaders of Portland, Ore.-based law firm Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt told only three or four people internally about plans to lay off 19 of its 400 employees and cut the salaries of associates. Still, at 9:11 a.m. on June 15, just 41 minutes after the first employees were notified of the layoffs, the law firm received an email from AboveTheLaw.com, a legal Web site.
Dusan Petricic: "We had gone to extraordinary lengths to contain this because the people involved have been here for a very long time," says Mark Long, managing partner. He says the firm is reevaluating how it manages communications in an era of blogs and social media.
A week earlier, AboveTheLaw disclosed salary cuts at law firm Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP before some associates had been told by managers, a spokeswoman confirms. The spokeswoman says the firm doesn't know who gave the information to the blog.
In a recent survey, 14% of 586 U.S. employees admitted they had sent confidential or potentially embarrassing company emails to outsiders. The survey was conducted by the American Management Association and the ePolicy Institute, a consulting firm.
In response, employers are changing policies and deploying technology to prevent leaks. Flushing Financial Corp. is installing software that prevents employees from sending email to specified addresses and scans email attachments for sensitive information, says Allen Brewer, chief information officer of its Flushing Savings Bank unit. The bank had previously blocked its 350 employees from accessing personal email accounts at work, a common practice in the financial-services industry. Flushing hasn't had recent layoffs, but Mr. Brewer says executives wanted to tighten security.
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Have a question about managing? Write to us here and we may answer in an upcoming column. Management newsletter: Click to sign up WSJ.com/Management: News, ideas, advice Internet-security companies say more employers are installing such software. Optenet, a closely held Spanish software maker, says sales of its Web-monitoring and email protection software increased 50% in the first six months of this year, compared with the same period last year. Its technology can peer inside email for sensitive or confidential information, block the message and alert managers.
Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP, a Chicago-based law firm, is taking a different approach: avoiding company-wide memos on some topics. The firm didn't distribute a memo on its February layoffs. Managing partner Jerry Biederman says that reflected a desire to communicate more directly and personally. He adds, "If you send an electronic communication to more than a small group of people there is a substantial possibility it will turn up on a site."
Employers have long sought to keep sensitive information private, and used a variety of techniques to plug leaks. But the emergence of blogs and Web sites, many targeted to a single industry or niche, combined with an abundance of recession-related bad news, has given the issue new urgency.
"There are more data breaches as the result of disgruntled insiders, and it's very much linked to the current economic environment and increase in layoffs," says Francis deSouza, senior vice president of the enterprise security group at Symantec Corp., a leading maker of security software.
When information does get out, some employers are aggressively pursuing leakers. Kroll Inc., a risk-consulting firm that specializes in electronic security, has received more requests from companies looking to identify leaks over the past 12 months than any similar prior period, says Rich Plansky, managing director of business intelligence and investigation.
The instantaneous nature of the Internet may prompt changes in established habits. Dallas Lawrence, vice president of digital solutions for Levick Strategic Communications, says employers can no longer expect to release information internally a few days before making a public announcement. Rather, he says the same message should be communicated internally and externally simultaneously.
Write to Dana Mattioli at dana.mattioli@wsj.com
