How can you oversee your employees’ use of company e-mails without violating their privacy?
According to a recent nationwide survey, more than 40% of businesses monitor their workers’ e-mails. If you’re one of these companies, a disgruntled employee might well sue you for invasion of privacy (the number of privacy lawsuits has skyrocketed by 3,000% during the past decade).
The best way to protect yourself against this risk is to create a written policy warning employees that you might be monitoring their use of e-mail. Bear in mind that because your business owns the e-mail system – software, network access, and computers – you have the legal right to oversee workers for misusing it to violate company policy or break the law.
The first step in implementing this policy is to have all employees sign a disclaimer that acknowledges the company’s right to monitor their e-mail. You can do this when an employee is hired, at contract renewal, or at a company meeting – and don’t forget to circulate any updates to the policy throughout the company. Apply e-mail monitoring as uniformly as possible, because singling out an individual without a clear reason to do so could leave you vulnerable to a discrimination lawsuit. Finally, be sure to have your attorney review the policy.
A comprehensive e-mail policy can:
1) provide an effective defense against invasion of privacy litigation
2) educate your employees on the proper use of e-mail – which should go far to reduce potential problems from misusing the system.
If you’d like to learn more about how to balance protecting the integrity of your company’s e-mail system with your employees’ right to privacy, please get in touch with us. As always, we’re here to help.
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Recent headlines about electronic spies hacking into computer networks from the Pentagon to China reinforce the dangerous reality that a “malware” (software that accesses systems to steal sensitive financial and client information) is becoming increasingly sophisticated and widespread.
According to a recent report from the NPD Group, the average U.S. household with a Web connection has 5.7 devices – desktops, laptops, tablets, and/or smart phones — which are highly vulnerable to malware attacks. The more workers who use these devices to access the Web sites of their employers, the greater the threat of cybercrime.
To help protect the security of your company’s data against intrusion from malware, experts recommend taking these precautions:
- Identify the business processes and data you need to protect and the risks associated with them.
- Limit access to sensitive data to authorized users. Provide them with strong passwords and don’t allow any sharing.
- Make sure that employees use only secure wireless networks when connecting to your site.
- Provide users with strong authentication measures and anti-malware software.
- Know your users and their behavior. Compare details of incoming login connections with the information you have about the user. If you find anomalies, add such precautions such answering a security question.
- Look for corrupted devices. Authenticated users might acquire malware on their devices that puts your data at risk once they log in. For example, man-in-the-browser (MitB) attacks can hijack authenticated sessions.
- Secure high-value transactions. Identify these transactions and refuse to accept them from devices with suspicious configurations.
Our agency’s specialists can work with you in developing and implementing a comprehensive anti-malware program for your company. Please feel free to get in touch with us at any time.
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Your last newsletter discussed the benefits of Building Ordinance insurance. If you’re planning to build on your property or adding to an existing structure, a related policy – Builders Risk – can protect you from losses during construction, helping make sure that you finish the project.
The amount of coverage should reflect the total value of the completed structure (including the costs of material and labor, but not the value of the land). In most cases, the construction budget will be the best source for calculating this amount.
The policy is usually written for a period three months, six months, or 12 months. If needed, the term can be extended once.
Builders Risk covers damage to the insured structure(s) from a wide variety of causes, ranging from natural disasters (wind, lightning, hail, and lightning) through accidental events (fire, explosion, or vehicle accidents) to human activities (such as theft and vandalism). Coverage usually also includes:
- Fire department service charges for saving or protecting property from a covered cause of loss.
- Removal of debris from property damaged by a covered loss.
- Losses from the backup of sewer and drains.
Most policies exclude losses from earthquake, flooding employee theft, mechanical breakdown, contract penalties, war, government action, or faulty design and workmanship. You might be able to add coverage for some of these exclusions – such as earthquakes and flooding – if the building is in an area that’s prone to one or both of these natural disasters.
Bear in mind that this policy does not provide Liability coverage for accidents or injuries on your property.
We’d be happy to tailor a comprehensive Builders Risk product that fits your needs – and budget. Just give us a call.
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Mobile devices are the mighty double-edged swords of today’s workplace. On the one hand, they provide greater integration of information, on the other, they could be your business’s one-way ticket to a catastrophic security breach. This week we had the amazing opportunity to speak with Anthony Kinney, Microsoft’s Verizon Partner Manager, about mobile security and the ways to mitigate data risk in a BYOD environment.
According to Kinney, the three main security risk areas associated with BYOD are:
- Data loss prevention, which has to do with securing the data on a device in the
case of it being lost or stolen.
- Data in transit, which is most often
protected by encrypting information to ensure that all communications between
the device and backend infrastructure are secure.
- Data leakage, which is
about keeping a user’s work and personal information separate. In other words,
“protecting users from themselves.”
We asked Kinney what Microsoft is doing to make sure that moving to a pocket office doesn’t mean introducing security risk. He discussed how our multilayered approach to security makes adopting a BYOD policy far less of a risk, with solutions like Secure boot technology, remote “wipe” capabilities, and automatic cloud storage (among other security solutions).
What makes the greatest difference, however, are the actions a company takes to ensure that their data is secure. The way Kinney sees it, employees jailbreaking and rooting devices is one of the largest risk factors for companies who allow employees to BYOD. What those companies do is implement third-party services to “containerize the data,” so it never actually goes onto the local device.
According to Kinney, Windows Phone solves for this by protecting the data at the data center level before it even gets to the device. This means each document can have specific edit/view/share settings so that when it’s accessed on a mobile device it can’t be ‘saved as’ or forwarded to another cloud service, depending on what the settings permit. This way the phone fully understands the corporate policies on the document, helping IT to provide security—even at the file level.
This level of device integration with your data allows your company to consider a BYOD or CYOD policy without the need for third-party security solutions—which themselves offer another point of potential failure and risk. By working with your existing desktop OS, email, and other systems, the native Windows Phone OS helps mitigate data loss risk for your pocket office by preventing it in the first place.
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If your Auto insurance company sees you as a deadbeat or high-risk or driver, it might cancel or non-renew your policy.
Because insurers take cancellation seriously they won’t eliminate coverage for a traffic ticket or two. What’s more, state regulators ban cancellations under most circumstances.
However, a company can non-renew your insurance at the end of each policy period (six to 12 months) or cancel the policy during the first 30 to 60 days that it’s in force. The main reason for midterm cancellation is nonpayment. State regulators set the requirements, such as a written notice of non-payment, together with a 10 to 30-day grace period to pay.
Some states allow insurers to cancel coverage, usually for an activity – such as a DUI conviction that involves bodily injury or substantial damage – which indicates you’re at high risk for an accident; or for misrepresenting your driving history (for example, not disclosing that your teenager was behind the wheel instead of you when an accident occurred). Some companies will backdate coverage to the cancellation date, while others will not cover you during the period when you haven’t paid your premiums.
If you can’t bring your account up to date or the company cancels you for a reason other than non-payment, your policy probably won’t be renewed – which means you’ll have to look for insurance elsewhere, probably at a higher rate. Depending on the reason for cancellation, some companies might refuse to write your business. In this case, you can to turn to the state’s assigned-risk pool, which offers bare bones coverage at higher rates.
Your best move is to do everything possible to avoid cancellation or non-renewal. For example, if you can’t afford to premium payments, consider reducing your coverage rather than take the risk or cancellation.
For more information, just give us a call. We’re here to help!
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If you want to insure a mansion or a priceless art collection, don’t be surprised if a certified thermographer shows up at your door, infrared camera in hand.
Thermal imaging cameras are among the latest high-tech tools Homeowners insurers are using to help stem losses before they become catastrophes, saving policyholders from heartbreak and companies millions in damage claims.
One major insurance company is using thermal imaging cameras for its high-value homes, letting inspectors “see” hidden hot or cool spots. A hot reading might indicate a fire hazard from an electrical malfunction, while a cool reading could come from a leak. In one case, the camera detected a cool spot in a ceiling due to a leak caused by a faulty 37-cent clip in an upstairs ice maker. If the ceiling had collapsed, it would have caused $125,000 in damage.
High-tech devices aren’t limited to the high-end market. One insurer offers an online risk-assessment tool that its Homeowners clients can use to find the risks for flooding, wildfire and storm surge, based on their address. This company also provides its clients inexpensive alarms that can detect potential water leaks before they can cause extensive, and expensive, damage.
Insurance companies are exploring new technologies. One insurer has patented a data recorder that can be installed in building to analyze potential causes of damage or destruction. Another company has filed a patent for a system that would use spectroscopy to identify chemical changes caused by wildfires and other natural disasters. If such a change were detected and confirmed, the company could speed up the claims process.
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