I work for a government entity and believe me if you need a reminder not to text a journalist non-public information my line of work is not for you. I say dont lie during any part of the job application. Its also possible that the way you talked to your boss about it cost you a second chance too- if you were anything other than mortified and taking 100% responsibility, they likely thought it wasnt worth trusting you again. But when the guilt is deserved, its got a purpose. There are no legal ramifications or civil lawsuits at this stage as it wasn't trade secrets or secret IP. This is how old I am. The main problem is that 'copying data in a very insecure way to be able to bring those data. Dan is such a pain! If you were fired for an embarrassing reason that would torpedo your chances in an interview, say that your position was eliminated. If Jane knows, then it cant be too bad.. Its not possible to catch every mistake or typo over the course of a whole career. I deal with it by having friends in the firm who I can say it to (but not in a bar!). Fired for gross misconduct because I sent confidential information to personal mailbox - how do I get another job? They fell prey to the Its just a quick peek and it wont hurt anybody fallacy. I think she was trying to lessen some of the guilt she felt, but really she should have just sat with that feeling and let it fuel her resolve to never share confidential info with an outside party again. I suspect youre referring to a case where a patient was put in danger, but where no obvious harm occurred like a psychiatrist consensually sleeping with their patient, which an unscrupulous psychiatrist might see as a victimless crime, but which is incredibly risky behavior. If it was more time than 6 months, thats a resume gap that a recruiter will ask about, and if the OP lies about the gap, an experienced recruiter will hear it in her voice. Unauthorized Emails: The Risks of Sending Data to Your Personal Email Accounts. You are allowed to feel your feels about things, so long as you understand the reality. Which is actually good most of us get making a mistake when were young, and really learning from it. Theres a great blog called SorryWatch (.com) that analyzes & critiques apologies made by public figures. In this situation, I reported myself is simply false, given OPs expectation that her mentor wouldnt pass along what she knew to anyone else. But if I did, itd basically just be gossip (I hear Senator Ys staff is really frustrated) that they could choose to report out in detail or not, and definitely wouldnt be traced back to me. And it seems like you do. Its unfortunate that LW lost her job over it but the coworker isnt to blame for LWs decision to disclose information they werent supposed to. Fascinating (and fun!) Sometimes he wasnt working on confidential stuff, and he could come home and geek out over what he was doing if he wanted. You committed battery. And, yeah, that happens, its part of being a human. How should I explain that I'm looking for a job because my employer may be shutting down? Oh yes. 4. Let me be clear she did not leak it. They might tell superiors accidentally, out of frustration (e.g. I work for a public universitys PR office and I 100% know Id be fired if I shared info with anyone before pub date. whatever you think is appropriate] to make sure it doesnt happen again.. Oh my. But leadership has to know that if they share confidential material with us that it will stay confidential. Everyone in the workplace has an equal obligation and responsibility to ensure that rules are upheld because thats what keeps the company operating smoothly and in business and able to provide jobs to you all. I think it most likely would be very boring, but some stuff like the jobs report a few days early would be very interesting to unscrupulous investors. Share information about the new roller coaster being put in at a theme park? I think people beat themselves up enough internally without us having to do it for them most of the time. Yeah, I wish the mentor had walked the LW directly to the boss to discuss this openly. You can never rely on people to be 100% trustworthy, no matter how long youve known them. Lack of integrity. This was also my thought. As in I am so, so sorry! But given the kind of convo LW describes.while the LW really should not have been surprised they got reported and then fired, and does seem to be downplaying the severity, I wonder if something about the convo led them to believe it was somehow less serious than the mentor clearly understood it to be, and mentor didnt seem to do anything to help the LW understand how big a deal this is, which is kind of a bummer. Whether or not you knew about the policy upfront, you need to be ready to discuss steps you take to stay informed about policies and ensure you're following them. You asked how to handle this in future interviews and one key is owning the mistake, taking responsibility for it. And youre a risk, on top of having done a fireable offense. Maybe thats the case in your field, but usually confidential doesnt mean that. I think one can be upset at not getting a second chance without feeling necessarily entitled to one. If you got the launch codes for the missiles, thats a big no no to share. exciting! Completely unrelated to the topic at hand, love the username! He had a fairly high security clearance and was stationed at NORAD for a time. How do I politely turn down the call for an interview by another employer? Take this to heart in your next position and deal with sensitive information. When an employer says something is confidential, take it seriously If a breach is proved, the employee may be liable for hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages Howard Levitt Published Aug 01, 2019 Last updated Oct 28, 2019 4 minute read Join the conversation All mom did was hand dad the phone. Maybe you let them know more then they should even without meaning too? I dont know, I think thats overstating. you get to a point where you just really really need to share. Or did you double down on not my fault, not a big deal, and co-worker shouldnt have said anything? 4) The coworker was absolutely right to report the breach in confidentiality. Good luck to you, OP, with getting over this one. This. Or does it only matter that I broke a rule? This is one of those very serious offenses for which there are no second chances in many organizations, even when the breach is accidental or through slop practices and not intentional. And the young comment. OP is in a pickle for sure. Shes assuming the friend has more self-control than she does, which is precarious at best. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been. 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. I feel like this misses the overall lesson Allison is trying to impart here. You said it yourself that you were working on client confidential information, and sent it to your personal mailbox. Sure but I think its highly unlikely that someone at OPs level would have access to that. In this case you will get a second chance it will just be with another employer. This may have been part of why the manager took the steps she did. But even the first is really really, really bad. Because a) LW broke confidentiality. In an ideal world, it doesnt happen at all. I was wondering the same thing. Yeah, seconding this. This violates workplace compliance and trust. And if weve learned anything from this letter, its that information thats supposed to be kept secret isnt always. It makes the sender aware of their mistake and less likely to bother you again in the future. A fine of up to $100,000 and five years in jail is possible for violations involving false pretenses, and a fine of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in jail is possible when HIPAA Rules have been violated for malicious reasons or for personal gain. The penalty for breach of confidentiality isn't restricted to employees who have . Im sorry, but I think you were fired with pretty good cause and it would be important to own that or you wont be able to spin the story for future employers. First, you need to be able to frame what you did for yourself. I wouldnt lead with it, but I wouldnt hide it either if it ever comes up, and folks will likely ask about why youve left past jobs. Phishing emails are emails that appear to be from a legitimate source, but are actually from a malicious source. It doesnt matter if theyd trust this person with their firstborn child. Thats a big deal. The details dont really matter. They are designed to trick the recipient . YOU know you wouldnt do it again, but nobody else can really know that. There was no warning, no suspension, nothing. If OP had never confided in any coworker about what she had done, it would still not be blind-siding to be fired for it. Ive been poking around in our payroll system for the last two weeks. I hope there are things at your job that are exciting to you! This is important both in terms of owning your mistake and not blaming the person who reported it. Ive represented or advised friends, friends of friends and the occasional famous person, and nobody else knows anything about it nor will they ever. Separately, when you share, you have to still be oblique enough to not get yourself in trouble. Hopefully there still something to be said for that! Is it possible to rotate a window 90 degrees if it has the same length and width? I didnt know how to say it without seeming to condone the breach. rev2023.3.3.43278. Accidents do happen, we are all human but what rights you have if you share private company information by mistake really depends on a few things: the type of information that was accidentally distributed, how this impacted your company, and what the consequences were for you. And they also need to have an acute understanding that the timing of disclosure makes a HUGE, TREMENDOUS difference. I dont know if it was to avoid track-covering or to prevent retaliation, but that was a specific part of the procedure. Yes, you can get fired for opening a phishing email. (And even then, the existence of the record has to be disclosed even if the actual record is not disclosed. Candidate must then come up with a good reason why former employer wont re-hire given they merely eliminated the position. Its not an obligation to confront. But I cant talk about the specifics of that scene. When it came up during her interview, the candidate said it was complex and that shed learned from it. Where I work, there are policies that state an employee that finds out about certain kinds of misconduct is mandated to report it or face consequences if it comes out that they knew and didnt report it. Back in the dinosaur era (early 80s) the directors secretary was the only one tasked with typing up yearly evaluations on high-level staff. She cut a guys LVAD wires so that hed be bumped up to the top of the heart transplant donor list? Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust.. Its extremely tempting to want to be the person in-the-know, but my motivation for keeping things confidential is stronger: I dont want to ruin my reputation, and I dont want deal with the fallout of severely disappointing my colleagues, whom I respect and like. but to start the process of damage control. I was talking about this upthread before I saw this discussion. Normally it can be resolved by contacting the person you wrote to by mistake, and get in writing that they have deleted it without doing anything with it. Its the Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust. that did it for me (especially after all the ways the OP dodged responsibility in the original letter). As someone who works in PR/comms, my recommendation is to tell future employers the truth and emphasize what youve learned: I remind people about once a year that not only can I not look up their medical info on my own, I cant look it up even if they ask me to, and I get in even more trouble if I look up my own medical info. The fact is, its just not their secret to share. While irritating, email from mass marketing lists dont require a response and you probably wouldnt get an answer anyway. She already got that advice from Alison. Request a personalized demo to see how Egress Prevent will help you prevent data breaches over email. In the worst cases though, businesses can lose clients and employees can lose jobs. Agreed. I used to handle accounts, but could not handle my own. I want to push back hard on this, the coworker is not a rat. On the other hand maybe they didnt listen to her or believe her, and in that case shes been fired based on a misunderstanding but that doesnt help her because what she actually did wasnt OK either. He and my mother kept their noses clean. There isnt really such thing as a rat in the workplace. On other occasions, you might accidentally receive a confidential email with information meant for one person (or a few people) you know. Judgement errors tend to repeat themselves. Trying to tell the OP otherwise is to minimize the impact of a serious offense. The coworker did the right thing. 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. OP if I was part of an interview for you, and you brought up this situation the way its phrased here, Im sorry to say it would be an immediate pass. The difference is if the potential for and type of jail time you risked. Communications professionals are privy to so many deals and information that cant be divulged to even spouses until they become public. 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. The contact form sends information by non-encrypted email, which is not secure. It would have been better if she had told you first that she was going to tell someone, but whether she warns you first has no bearing on whether she was obligated to disclose. It could also end poorly if the employer actually sees a job opening posted for the position the LW claims was eliminated. That makes the violation much worse. When we make mistakes, they are impactful, but we're human and it happens. It was the wrong thing to do, and Im sorry. The info I released did not in fact cause any problems, but I tremble now because it so easily could have, in even slightly different circumstances. I guess you just say I inadvertently let an important piece of information get out and I will take extraordinary safeguards to never let that happen again. Leaking information can actually be the right thing in some cases. Sharing HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL info with a JOURNALIST? Me too in Government. I would push back slightly on the leak to press part. Head of the department who everyone hates for non-scandal reasons is stepping down amid a scandal Really? It should go without saying: a breach of confidentiality could and would wind up in a bar complaint in my jurisdiction. Lack of the maturity to keep exciting news to onesself. Yup! Almost every situation I know of where someone was fired for cause was presented publically as a position elimination.. Life is full of these weird potholes we find ourselves in at times. Was the friend a journalist, or is there something else that would explain why she said that? The reply: Yes, the friend I texted happened to be a journalist but doesnt cover the area that I was working in. I could have just sent the report and most likely no one would have ever known, but it would have been a violation of company policy. That is exactly what could have happened to her government agency with the info that she leaked in the first place. The mistake was breaking company policy not that they announced to a coworker they broke company policy. Posting confidential company information, good or bad, is not protected. I guarantee you that somewhere in the company handbook for the Government Agency where you worked there is a paragraph about the obligations of an employee who learns of a data breach. It helps you to catch context-driven mistakes such as adding the wrong recipient, attaching the wrong file, or forgetting to use Bcc instead of cc. I dont know that I agree she should have thought twice (since going to a mentor is a good thing to do when youre in a difficult situation), but I think thats absolutely the lesson some people will take away! You got a hard hit, and I am sorry for all the difficulty that causes. Not generational, just a young person thing. This mixed with the coworkers inflated story, I would be more than annoyed by this coworker too. This reminds me of how Northwestern Hospital had to fire 50 employees back in March for violating HIPAA by accessing Jussie Smolletts medical records. What is the correct way to screw wall and ceiling drywalls? PRSA is an excellent suggestion! Does that matter? End of story. I feel LWs pain. Absolutely this. And especially in the field youre in, leaks are a big deal, and ESPECIALLY leaks to a member of the press. 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!! Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. e.g. I question that there are no details about your Monday meeting with HR here. Protect your people from socially engineered phishing attacks, Defend against attacks originating from compromised supply chain accounts, Detect fraudulent invoices and payment requests, Prevent people falling victim to targeted impersonation attacks, Defend against the delivery of ransomware and malware by email, Stop phishing attacks that lead to credential theft, Prevent email data loss caused by human error, Block exfiltration of personal and company data, Preserve ethical walls to prevent disclosure of information and avoid conflicts of interest, Apply the appropriate level of encryption to sensitive emails and attachments, Detect and prevent advanced email threats that slip through Microsoft 365, Provide people with easy, actionable advice in real-time at the point of risk, How to use a hacker's toolkit against them. Like you said, it was a breach and thats serious on a professional level (your friend is a journalist, too! So I guess maybe it is a generational thing? Right. I agree with you! Because when your mentor is a coworker at the same employer, you cannot, cannot speak as freely. Perhaps the way you feel (felt?) Like I said, very strange but its worked for me. I would have been fired if I did any one of the things OP did when I worked for the feds (e.g., using Slack, speaking to a journalist without authorization even if they were a long-time friend, disclosing soon-to-be-public information before it was publicly available). If you hadnt told your co-worker, then they could not have ratted you out. Appropriately so, but still, wow. Me too. And in the future if you really cant hold something in (that is not full on illegal to discuss) and want to share it with your spouse or something, dear God dont ever do it in writing! Thats the one that needs to learn to keep things to herself? Say I have a friend working on a presidential campaign, and she tells me theres a bunch of debate about the candidates strategy, I have to decide whether to mention that to my colleague who covers the candidate. And, to be fair, based on your language about technical leaks, victimless, and ratting out I dont think your organization could entirely trust that you understand the gravity of the situation and wouldnt repeat the mistake. Im sorry it happened to you, though, and it definitely stinks. Its helped me when a friend has told me something in confidence but I really need to talk about it for whatever reason. Good luck with your job search! You did wrong, fessed up, and got fired anyway. If you embezzle from the company and tell a coworker who then reports it, the mistake is embezzlement, not telling a coworker about it. I wanted to say, it sucks you lost your job after this one time indiscretion, but Im glad you understand the seriousness of it and with Alisons script, I hope youll find a new job soon. A few weeks ago I worked on a medical chart for A Big Rockstar, but not only do I get fired if I tell anyone which one, I get fired if I open up a single page of his chart that I cant explain, if asked, what the exact and specific work-related reason for opening that page was. Later the coworker left the company and at company B was asked to write a similar report for the new company. I will be in so much trouble if anyone finds out! your blindsided coworker is not required to enter into a cover-up conspiracy with you. Thats also real life. Thank you for explaining this! If you cant keep your mouth shut then you need a new line of work. My guess is thats where some of the defensiveness in the initial letter comes from that no one would have known if not for the self-report. But that was the right response to what you did. In other words, dont assume the information only went to the person you sent it to. Passing it off as a mistake, or trying to portray ignorance (in the sense of saying "oh, I didn't realize it was wrong when I did it") is just going to make it sound like you don't bother understanding or following policies. The actual problem is that OP shared confidential information. I was reading the email at home and after reading the first paragraph I exclaimed out loud (so my spouse could hear) Ooooh. But if you act that way about a mistake at a previous job, I think people might worry about the same behavior in the future. I was under the impression that most big companies had a policy against telling a reference checker anything beyond dates of employment. My only other advice is to consider if there were any conversations on slack that were inappropriate. If youve no idea who the message was supposed to go to, simply let the sender know you received it by accident and move on. Is it FOUO though? Some offenses are serious enough that a single incident is enough to fire someone. First coworker punched second coworker. When theres something I really want to share with my wife, I mask it, pretty much what we do here talking about how the client invested in llama shearings, or called up asking about rumours of purple llamas, or asked us to sell all their teapots that kind of thing. If a member of your staff violates this explicit. But she also would not tell me if she spent a day at work planning for a war!). Only hope going forward is own up flatly and without defensiveness . For context I work with PHI covered under HIPAA for my job. Her best chance of moving forward and looking as good as possible in an interview is to accept full responsibility and say that she made a mistake and learned from it. Its a common occurrence, especially within a large business where autocorrect can incorrectly select people with similar names. They are not neutral. This is so true. However, it is unlikely that the circumstances of your firing will be able to be overlooked by an employer who needs to trust your judgment with sensitive data, definitely for the foreseeable future, possibly for many years into your career. FOIA and open records requests are really big deals. We are not in kindergarten. We received a staff email that shared that they were going to release some BIG news about positive new office changes and remodeling and that there was going to be a BIG press conference in 2 days at our office with a lot of high-up political bigwigs and asked everyone to show up for support. 2.) Moving forward, the best way to handle it is be honest. quite a lot of people are going to feel as though youre making them an accomplice in your bad behavior. I think its fair for you to be upset that you didnt have another chance, but also understandable that your employer felt it couldnt give you one. Ive seen many workplaces that dont spend an amount of time discussing confidentiality that is commensurate with its importance, or that dont go into specifics about when it is and isnt ok to tell somebody something you heard at work, and a general statement tends not to hold up to the in-the-moment excitement of oooooh I know THING about CELEBRITY! or whatever. Plus, I think part of it was that it was exciting BECAUSE it was secret, and now its apparently common knowledge. After all, nobody wants to tell their manager that they might (however accidentally) be responsible for a data breach. Maybe the information was a big deal to the agency but not externally (say getting a big grant funded), but if it was something that was legitimately important news, her friend would have been at least a little torn between loyalty to her friend and loyalty to her job. This was a person whose reviews had been glowing up until that moment and I am sure they are still upset that this came out of the blue. Besides the stuff that has already been discussed upthread like potential for insider trading, unfair advantage in things like competing for federal contracts or grants, or derailing a communications strategy, one of the biggest reasons to keep work information private is due to counterintelligence concerns. All of that being said, I wish her the best in moving forward and finding another job shell bounce back and be the wiser for it. Really? a coworker at my company was discussing a future potential release at a bar loud enough that someone heard it, and then posted it on a public forum. Leaking private information in a huge breach, especially if that leak is to a journalist. Privacy Policy and Affiliate Disclosures. Even a private company would consider this a breach of trust, and could could consider firing. (Presumably easier to get caught via company comms but doesnt make the leak any different imo). People dont talk about it very much but it definitely happens. If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. Best wishes to OP in her work on this. And you did it over company lines. While it didnt result in any press, it was obviously a major lapse in judgment and I understand why it resulted in my termination. what did you want to get out of sharing with her? She IS a rat! This reminds me of the story of the Apple employee who left a prototype iPhone in a bar by mistake, before the official release. This friend understood the gravity of the information I told her, and I 100% trusted her to not leak it. 2. Its not the end of the world as long as you adjust your thinking going forward and really try to understand why confidentiality policies exist. Any of our PR folks would be immediately fired. We also got early warning that legislators were encouraged to resign, a day or two before the press releases. The obligation to report a security breach doesnt include warning the violator. Fired. I resent our new hires for setting better work-life boundaries than our company normally has, hairy legs at work, my office sent me a random TV, and more, heres an example of a great cover letter with before and after versions, my employee cant handle even mildly negative feedback, my new coworker is putting fake mistakes in my work so she can tell our boss Im bad at my job, insensitive Diversity Day, how to fire someone who refuses to talk to us, and more, weekend open thread February 25-26, 2023, assistant became abusive when she wasnt invited to a meeting, my coworkers dont check on people who are out sick, and more. The misrepresentation of what happened is my concern. Thats a horrendously burdensome thing to ask! I got defensive and young from OPs response. Its also possible that she got caught in a broader crackdown on leaks and thus wasnt given a second chance when she otherwise might have been. Theres a difference between wishing you had a second chance (acknowledges they arent entitled to one) and being upset you didnt have one (expected that there would be one). Oof this is so condescending! I went to my boss explained the situation and let me boss make the decision if we wanted to share the report. What probably really hurt the OPs case was that the friend is a journalist. Your second co-worker who sexually harassed a woman was put on a PIP? And then they did it again. They are pretty free with stating exactly why someone was fired. If you werent human, you wouldnt make mistakes. Browse other questions tagged, Start here for a quick overview of the site, Detailed answers to any questions you might have, Discuss the workings and policies of this site. The type of violation you are talking about normally only applies to confidential (shall close) records and not non-public (may close) records. 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