What goes on behind the scenes?

There has been a big push in recent years for companies to appear ethical, green and generally better than their rivals (Five tips for CIOs looking to prevent Wikileaks-style disclosures). Meanwhile, behind the firewall they're as unethical and downright criminal as they have ever been.

The nature of business is that sometimes by design or mistake you'll do something that is maybe a bit murky. If that is one small blot on an otherwise pristine record and you deal with it as soon as you become aware, it is unlikely to get out. If it's a case of business as usual, you risk it being the straw that breaks some camel's back and leads to a whistle-blower.

The article's advice is fine for keeping sensitive but ethical data confidential, but you should also look at the full life cycle of your data, including where backups are stored. I know of at least one company that suffered a data leak because the person who was supposed to drive offsite backup tapes between two sites (each stored the off-site backups for the other) was stopping off at a competitor's site which had a high-speed streamer to copy the tapes. It was only when the van was replaced with one that came with an anti-theft tracker that this was discovered.

Stephen