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Departing Employees
Most companies have taken care to ensure that new and departing employees have completed Human Resource files with nondisclosure agreements, non-competition agreements (where applicable), invention and assignment agreements and various other agreements, acknowledgements and forms. Are companies doing enough to protect themselves from intellectual property theft by departing employees and consultants?
Typically, departing employees turn in their keys, access cards, and computers on their last day. The keys are reused, access cards destroyed, and the departing employee's computer makes its way back to the IT department to be reformatted and reissued to a new employee. When companies reissue computers without making a forensically sound copy of the hard drive prior to reformatting, they hinder their ability to proactively prosecute theft of intellectual property by departing employees.
Properly securing the original or making forensically sound copies of the computers and storage devices of employees with access to trade secrets and intellectual property may be the best proactive protection against theft. In the case of a pending termination of employees considered to have significant risk, making forensic copies of their computers should be 'standard operating procedure.' This action may be the best defense against theft and misappropriation of assets. Laptop computers, internet e-mail accounts, USB drives, compact flash cards, CD and DVD burners and other technology advances have made copying and removing large amounts of information from a company all but invisible to the eye.
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