This was actually a very kind way to get this point across. I dont know if shell do it again, but Im certainly not going to take the risk on someone who doesnt even seem to be sorry. Even if the coworker had malicious intentions, they were following privacy laws and regulations. Its to LWs friends credit that she didnt pass on the info to a journalistic colleague who DOES work in that area; its not to LWs credit. I definitely learned my lesson, and it was a hard one, and one that I will regret for a very, very long time. While most organisations take measures to prevent and protect against external cyber-attacks, many don't protect themselves against accidental leaks by their internal staff. Government tends to operate differently. My boss and I had a very serious conversation about it, and I think the only reason I was not fired was that I immediately and unequivocally took responsibility. The amount that LW trusted that friend is a small fraction of how much the government trusted LW. (Obviously dont tell any potential employer that but its my personal opinion). The Solicitors Regulation Authority has also issued a written rebuke to Christopher Gossage, of Russells solicitors, who confided to his wifes best friend that Robert Galbraith, author of The Cuckoos Calling, was really one of the most famous and wealthy authors in the world. Ive been in the position of having the relevant information, and even if its hard, you just cant tell your journalist friends unless youre okay with them using it: its what they do, and its not fair to ask them not to. I would go through the channels to fire someone immediately over this, because it would make me lose all trust in them and if I can no longer be confident in their abilities to do their job effectively without spillage, theyre of no use to my team. I wonder LW, would your interactions with the higher ups have been different if your co-worker/mentor had given you the heads up that she was going to have to report this? Draft your UI forms and pre-write your objection to his unemployment on the grounds of "good cause" firing for willful misconduct- Then after all that you can fire him. But OP gets to choose what they think the coworkers motivations may have been. 2. I dont love not being able to tell her things (even though we are each others I promise not to tell anybody (but Friend) person), the way we share this information is by forwarding press releases once the information is public. This is a very astute comment, especially your last paragraph. Oh, I wish Id seen this before replying. 911 Dispatcher Fired for Privacy Violation - HIPAA Journal The LW actually had a responsibility to keep the info confidential, and the friend doesnt. Your failure to understand the gravity of your actions is alarming. Communications professionals are privy to so many deals and information that cant be divulged to even spouses until they become public. As a damage control, should I (as the manager responsible) send a message to all employees explaining what occurred and asking them to respect the confidentiality of the information and not open nor forward the information to anyone else or should I just not bring additional attention to this message? I understand that you get that what you did was a very big deal as a single event, but I think you might need to spend some more time examining for yourself why you would describe this as a victimless crime. The fact that your friend didnt as far as you know tell anyone else about your bombshell doesnt meant that nothing happened. Share information about a Harry Potter book before it being officially released? broke a rule can be trivial, even if its technically a firing offense. confusedabouteverything Forumite. If you lean over a cubicle and whisper I broke the rule! Yes, this is the way to do it: Friend, I just got the best news at work, I am so excited! In addition to 100% needing to own it when asked about it, I think OP may also benefit from focusing the job search on jobs that dont involve handling sensitive or high profile information. Oh honey, how young are you? Ive been under NDA for things I cant even disclose to my boss, much less a friend outside the organization. Our newspapers report quite frequently on gossip of whats happening behind the scenes. Some of the stuff I handle is really interesting logistically and historically but I just do not have the right to get carried away and share it. Thank you it was getting boring to read everyones outrage. As someone who practices public relations, calling this victimless gives me a lot of anxiety. If I know that Senator Y is releasing a health care plan on Monday that would require mandatory surgery for every American, and he has bipartisan support for it, thats a much more specific news tip, and Id rather my friend just not tell me and save me the heartburn. As a former journalist, I can assure you journalists dont leak information, unless its something confidential about their own employers. Like its going to be easier to find a job because she has the integrity to say she got fired. You just seem to still want an answer and I picked up on this as a possible avenue to reflect on in your letter. So, if you find out that company X is going to be reporting a surprising drop in profits next week, the person in the company who told you this is gone. Just wanted to point out that OP said they worked in the government, so while yours might be the public understanding of confidential, it wouldnt apply to anything their job considered confidential. Yep. ), This didnt involve a records request. How do I tell potential future employers why I got fired and have them still want to hire me? She got paid to pose as Roeders* mistress, once. +1 Can you get fired for sending a meme? - triple j - ABC Organisations can set up static rules (for example, you can send emails to business A but not business B), but these traditional methods are rigid and unreliable. It's hard to answer this question without specifics, but it strikes me as very important to differentiate between an accident or mistake in the sense of "oops, I did that by unintentionally" versus misconduct, as in "this was against policy and I deliberately did it anyways" regardless of whether you knew about the policy or had a good reason to do it or not. And maybe they can, and maybe that chain will end with someone who doesnt forward the info on, or peter out once the information does become public in this case. On the non-security side of things its fascinating to learn what the folks in the booth behind me are working on as Im quietly eating lunch, but its a serious security violation to discuss that kind of thing in public and it makes me cringe so hard when it happens. Ramp up your privacy settings across all accounts. Because I can almost guarantee that your reputation in that organization would never recover, even if you had remained employed. People are going think, If OP can minimize all the responsibility for this incident, she is going to be able to rationalize it away some other time in the future. 100%? All mom did was hand dad the phone. The main problem is that 'copying data in a very insecure way to be able to bring those data. What!!! Yes, the ratted me out thing is probably not a fair assessment of what actually happened here. And being mad at them is an effort to dodge responsibility and ownership of the actions that WERE at fault. This is a bad enough screw-up that I would be contemplating a career change, or at least a pivot to an area of communications where things like confidential information and media embargoes arent ever a factor. Sometimes they go so far as tell the bearer of the news that they now have to soothe them bc its their fault they feel bad. it doesnt count as they reported themselves if they later say they were ratted out by the person they reported it to. I have a friend whose mother did work for an intelligence agency during WW2. I just want to remind people that it happened. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. End of story. When they call for a reference, many employers will absolutely say if you were fired or laid off, and they will give detailed references. (It also might be notable that you didnt originally mention that your friend was a journalist until I asked about it which makes me think youre underestimating how much that matters.). One of the things your field requires is to be able to think and act dispassionately about the information you have custody over. Just because a story wasnt published about it doesnt mean it wasnt discussed internally among coworkers. Yeah, this is an excellent point. This is an actual security headache/nightmare for my government department as its so common for people to go out to lunch and start discussing what theyre working on while eating. Breach of confidentiality at work - Dealing with employees - Peninsula UK She would ask every rep if they were using TEAPOT o service accounts, and would proudly exclaim, My daughter built TEAPOT! She thought she was connecting with the people who helped her. Im thinking of the Elizabeth who went on a 20-email rage about being called Liz, or even the old 1970s memos from the Tiger Oil CEO that found new viral life in the digital age. Of course, it wasnt your mistake and youre under no legal obligation to do anything at all. No one ever called for a reference. Dont fall for it. She should have just sat with that feeling and let it fuel her resolve to never share confidential info with an outside party again. She shared it with a friend. You dont get a warning for things like that. Learn how to protect your investment management firm through intelligent email DLP. I want to caveat that when I originally wrote this, it had just happened and I was still extremely emotional about it, which is probably why I chose to leave out important information in my initial question. This is your making, and while I wish you luck, you have zero cause to be disgruntled with your coworker or employer. I had friends who would jokingly-semi-serious ask me if I was poking around their accounts and such while I was working there and I would deadpan look at them and say your finances and personal information isnt interesting enough to lose my job over and then change the subject. The enforcement has to be based on the idea that the leak was damaging. I think she got paid in sandwiches and the knowledge she was the only woman to neck with Nero Wolfe, though. All three have kept their mouths shut, at least to the best of my knowledge, and I can talk it over without worrying that I will cause a problem with my disclosing. Thats a flat out easy to uncover lie. I work for a state government agency and FOIA is a really big deal. If someone used the words ratted me out or told on me in an interview, that would be pretty much an immediate DQ for me as it shows a total lack of personal responsibility and maturity. This will sound very, VERY strange, but if you have the urge to share things youre not supposed to, theres a trick you can try: telling a fictional character in an imaginary conversation. because your performance / screw-up affects them, or because they feel they are being compared to you and want to put the record straight to defend themselves), or out of a sense that they have an obligation to report (whether or not they actually do). If not, an investigation would be started on which employees were poking around in Famous Persons account and why. I agree that the companys response was wrong the sexual harasser should have been fired but in the US, authority doesnt care. You hear something genuinely classified and blab it too because its so cool? And even more so in ballistic missile submarines! Perhaps the way you feel (felt?) +1 on the choice of language and framing. how did HR and OPs boss come to the conclusion that this information was spread through Slack (!) Yup, landline. Theres no way your managers could safely assign other confidential projects to you after leaking the information on this project. So mention it only if explicitly asked. But when youve broken someones trust, they dont owe it to you to offer that opportunity and shouldnt offer it unless they sincerely believe that you could meaningfully repair the breach quickly and comprehensively. The client can, of course, prevent such disclosure by refraining from the wrongful conduct. And then THAT person got so excited that they just had to tell someone Each person thinks theyre only telling one other person, and that they can trust that person. Sometimes I need to talk about what Ive heard or am excited about something I did which made a significant improvement to someones life, but I have to talk about that in a way that doesnt risk identifying the person at all. Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. Unfortunately, a lot of times people mistake the first for the second. OP, if everything that was predictably risky, harmful, dangerous, bad, illegal or wrong really felt bad on some core level, we would almost never need to make rules. But your framing of this does sound defensive and doesnt sound like youre taking responsibility for what happened. And this will definitely have an effect on how you come across to people interviewing you in future. Best of luck, and believe us all when we tell you that if you sound at all dismissive of the seriousness of this, prospective employers will (rightfully) worry that you may have a similar lapse in judgement again. Tessian Cloud Email Security intelligently prevents advanced email threats and protects against data loss, to strengthen email security and build smarter security cultures in modern enterprises. True story: in my last job someone mistyped an email address by a single letter and instead of going to a related government org it went to a journalist. (Presumably easier to get caught via company comms but doesnt make the leak any different imo). My boss wanted to press charges, but his business partner didnt, so they just fired him. Youll get another job. I now work somewhere where I have access to sensitive information, including my own. As the other commenter noted, this could have been a very serious offence considering you were working for the government. Me too. How to not get fired from work for what you post or send online: Make sure your Facebook and social media accounts are locked down. Does your company know she could have called the police? She should have told her this is serious and Im going to have to report you. Then at least OP could have avoided the slack room full of journalists escalation. Absolutely this. First coworker was fired in spite of the fact that he was a brilliant and (normally) even tempered guy with years of work at the corporation. Or you mistyped her email by one letter and it went to a colleague who had no reason to respect the embargo? My 2cents, LW if something was so exciting you couldnt keep it in, you were in the wrong field. OP, take a deep breath. Practically everything I do in my job is confidential to some degree. How to handle a hobby that makes income in US. (The fact that your friend is a journalist makes it particularly egregious.) But I now realize that I had no business sharing my bad behavior with colleagues it put them into a completely untenable position. Taking full responsibility isnt just the better moral choice, its the more effective one. Is there a single-word adjective for "having exceptionally strong moral principles"? Its no more blind-siding because the coworker reported the issue, than it would be if, say, IT had reported it after monitoring OPs traffic. And I dont think it helps the OP to say that she doesnt have the right to have feelings of resentment toward the coworker. We go through training every 6 months, that we should NOT to tell the coworker or customer that we will need to report them. Instead, youre better off with something like, The truth is, I was fired. Third, with bright line rules, we cannot adopt situational ethics where its ok to disclose to close-trusted-journalist-friend because we trust them. Employees can't just post anything they want on Facebook or anywhere else. Yeah, I wish the mentor had walked the LW directly to the boss to discuss this openly. Unfortunately, there are instances where employees have accidentally leaked confidential information. Sometimes he wasnt working on confidential stuff, and he could come home and geek out over what he was doing if he wanted. When I asked about the job move he said he had failed to make a required disclosure on a sale and so was fired, but how he took it to heart and had behaved since. 7 Ways Your E-mail Can Get You Fired - US News & World Report Good points, and good advice for anyone whos apologizing for anything. And it makes sense that it is. We call this a misdirected email and it's really, really easy to do. Ive been thinking a lot about apologies in general lately, and one of the most thought-provoking pieces of advice Ive seen is to always err on the side of assuming that whatever you did was a bigger deal than you think. So have a lot of other people who have managed to find other jobs. Either way, if you commit an offense, its best to never go with its not that big of a deal anyways. Owning up to your mistakes at the right time is hard and the natural instinct to defend yourself is strong, but ultimately thats the best thing to do and garners respect. I replaced someone who had embezzled from the (small) company. OP, I join Alison in wishing you the very best of luck! All rights reserved. Im also a supervisor. I agree, but its been called out and I dont want to derail on it. AND I told somebody within the company about that? OP, I can understand why you would want to talk to someone who was mentoring you about something like this, but when you tell someone you work with that you committed a pretty serious breach of duty and sharing nonpublic information is pretty much always a serious breach!!