February 24, 2009 by James Oliver
A survey released yesterday has revealed some troubling statistics for companies, especially ones in the technology sector. It appears that, out of 950 recently laid off people asked, almost sixty percent admitted to taking confidential information with them when they left their employers. This information included client lists, contact lists and other information that presumably ended up in the hands o a competitor in that person’s next job.
A factor behind this phenomenon is that people often feel that they have ownership of this information, as in many cases they helped to collate/create it, they are also, understandably, fairly unwilling to see their employer’s point of view having just been made redundant.
This is bad news in any industry but particularly in the technology sector. Inadvertently sharing a client list or database with a competitor can cost money, though not as much as handing over technical secrets to how your product is actually made, which is the worry that software companies or hardware manufacturers – who live and die by their innovations will have. Even if the company doesn’t use the information in their own products, the knowledge of what a competitor is doing or about to do has the potential to be hugely useful.
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