Give away the farm
Lawsuits are not the only risk employers face. Intellectual property can make its way out of the office more easily than ever with the help of electronic communications. For instance, Conlin, COO of eSniff, says the first thing the Denver Broncos football team entered into its eSniff monitor was the phrase "first 15," shorthand for the script, or playbook, of the first 15 plays planned for the next game.
eSniff logs all IP traffic, recording and reporting anything that's been labeled as suspicious. The administrator can then view the log summaries and quickly drill down to the actual content of any questionable email to make sure it hasn't fallen into the wrong in-box.
Should employers doubt the prevalence of email and Net abuse, Conlin provides them with a simple demonstration of his product. "We've never installed eSniff on a network and not found it to have a lot of inappropriate activity," he says, adding that close to 100 percent of workers register some kind of improper use.
That level of abuse is terrifying to any company aware of its vulnerability to lawsuits. "Think about the number of legal areas that companies are responsible for," says Joseph Murphy, a partner at Compliance Systems Legal Group. "Harassment, discrimination, environmental protection, copyright infringement, workplace safety, consumer protection. It's a list the length of my arm."
Both Sullivan and Lass point out that growing midsize businesses are at the highest risk for such problems. "Companies that have matured in some fashion past their infrastructures are most at risk because they won't yet have established documentable policies around IT security," says Lass.
Sullivan cautions, too, that executives at very small companies should not fool themselves into thinking they're immune just because they are personally familiar with their staff. "Even if they have only 35 people, they really are no less responsible for adhering to federal regulations. They may feel shocked and dismayed by a lawsuit, but they are nonetheless responsible," she says.
