Digital privacy versus national security. That’s how scores of articles have framed the controversy over Apple Inc.’s refusal to cooperate with the FBI in bypassing the security features of an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the deceased shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Largely overlooked is the fact that Farook’s employer could’ve prevented the whole controversy had it installed common software on the phone.

Syed worked for the County of San Bernardino as a health inspector. The county issued the iPhone in question to Farook to help him do his job. Farook signed an agreement giving the county the right to search the contents of the phone, but the county did not take measures to ensure its could enforce that right. Employers who allow their employees to use mobile devices for work typically install mobile device management (MDM) software on the device. MDM allows the employer to unlock a mobile device phone remotely, wipe the contents of the device, push software updates, and track the device’s location. According to an AP report, the county had a contract with a MDM provider, but it never installed the MDM software on Farook’s phone. The MDM service costs $4 per month per phone.

There are HR and IT lessons to be learned from this incident. One lesson is that employees should be required to grant their employers access to their mobile devices as a condition of using them for work-related purposes. Specifically, management should obtain an employee’s signed written agreement authorizing the company to access the contents of a mobile device that is connected to the company network. The County of San Bernardino did it at least obtain this kind of authorization.

A second lesson is that the right to access an mobile device is useless if you have no practical way of gaining access. This is where technology like MDM software is useful. Installation of MDM controls should be standard operating procedure in any Bring Your Own Device program. MDM software doesn’t have to be expensive either. Popular email server platforms like Microsoft Exchange have MDM controls built in. For more robust functionality, consider investing in specialized MDM solutions.

It shouldn’t take the prospect of a terrorist attack to highlight the importance of taking these lessons seriously.

One of the bombshells in the DeflateGate saga was the revelation that Tom Brady had his cell phone destroyed shortly before meeting with the National Football League’s investigators. According to the NFL’s written decision suspending Brady, Brady knew that the investigators wanted access to text messages on the phone he had when the AFC Championship was played. Even so, Brady instructed his assistant to dispose of the phone—just four months after starting to use it. The dubious circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the phone greatly hurt Brady’s credibility in NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell’s eyes, and was instrumental to his eventual decision to discipline Brady.

There are HR lessons to be learned from this story. An employee’s mobile device can contain information you need for an investigation or lawsuit. So what can you do to get access to the device or the data on it now that employees frequently use their personal devices for work?

Adopting a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) work policy is a good start. At a minimum, a BYOD policy should reserve the company’s right to access any electronic device an employee uses for work, even if the employee owns it. The policy should also state upfront that employees have no expectation of privacy to data stored on their personal devices – that’s the tradeoff for letting them connect to the company network.

After establishing the ability to take possession of employee-owned devices, think through the steps for preserving data on the devices before it’s too late. One measure is to issue a “litigation hold” instructing employees not to destroy a device or delete data from it. Be specific about the kinds of data they need to preserve. A crucial element of a litigation hold is an instruction to suspend routine purging of data or equipment – much like Brady’s practice of destroying his old phone whenever he got a new one. The litigation hold should be issued as soon as you know that a lawsuit or investigation is coming.

Next, determine the kind of electronic information you want. Preservation and extraction methods differ depending on the kind of data. Text messages need to be preserved quickly because once they’re deleted off a phone or tablet, it’s difficult to find a copy of them elsewhere. As Brady learned when he tried accessing text messages on his missing phone through his wireless carrier, carriers don’t keep subscribers’ text messages on their servers for very long, and they typically delete the messages after delivery to the recipient. Emails have a longer shelf life, especially if they’re stored in a web-based account like Gmail or Yahoo or transmitted through company servers.

Be proactive and act quickly. Don’t let your hopes of getting the electronic evidence you need get deflated.

The New York Times recently reported that Hillary Rodham Clinton used a personal email address for work and personal matters while she served as Secretary of State. Many employees could probably appreciate why Ms. Clinton chose to use a private email address for work purposes. She enjoyed the convenience of carrying one mobile device instead of two. That’s the same reason the Bring Your Own Device movement has been rapidly gaining momentum.

The convenience of commingling professional and personal online accounts comes at a price. One danger is unauthorized disclosure of confidential information.   Work-related information stored in an employee’s personal online account is not subject to security measures like firewalls, anti-virus software, and metadata scrubbing programs. Private online accounts may be vulnerable to cyberattacks, putting the confidentiality of their contents at risk. While such records might not concern national security matters as in the Clinton controversy, they could contain personnel information, medical history, or trade secrets, the disclosure of which could violate data privacy laws like HIPAA and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, not to mention hurting a company’s competitive edge or creating a public relations debacle.

Another risk is noncompliance with recordkeeping policies. Work rules dictating how long work files are kept before they’re disposed help organizations manage the task of responding to information inquiries like discovery requests in litigation. In some jurisdictions, an organization’s failure to produce a document in discovery because it was destroyed in compliance with the organization’s document retention policy generally is not considered unlawful destruction of evidence. (Note: Hawaii’s court rules were amended this year to recognize such a defense). But spotty enforcement of a document retention policy could destroy that defense. Popular ways of transferring work files include forwarding them to a personal email address or uploading them to a personal cloud storage account. Such practices could result in work files being kept beyond their authorized retention period, thus casting doubt on whether an organization actually follows its document retention policy.

Managing these risks begins with adopting a formal policy on use of personal accounts for work purposes and training employees to follow the policy. Without a policy in place, employees might have few qualms about using their personal accounts for work.  Consult with a lawyer with data privacy experience to ensure that your policy manages legal risks.

If your company decides to prohibit the transfer of work data to external locations, enforce that policy diligently. Work with your IT department or outside vendors to implement physical and software safeguards against unauthorized transfers. Conduct audits to ensure compliance with the policy.

Another strategy is to offer solutions that allow employees to work outside of the office conveniently without having to use their personal accounts. Consider hosting a private cloud storage site where employees can share files in a secured environment under your control. Also popular is virtual desktop software that allows employees to access their workstation remotely in a controlled environment.

Don’t wait until your employees’ data handling practices make the headlines before taking action to protect the confidentiality of your work files.

Suppose an email from your company’s in-house attorney instructs you to preserve all documents relating to an ex-employee who is threatening to sue for wrongful termination.  In the days before smartphones and cloud storage, this would have been a relatively limited exercise: paper documents would be set aside and files on the company server would be backed up.  But work-related data can be stored in many places today, including personal devices of employees.  Is a company required to preserve such data?

Costco Wholesale recently faced that issue in an employment discrimination and retaliation lawsuit.  See Cotton v. Costco Wholesale Corp., 2013 WL 3819974 (D. Kan. July 24, 2013).  The plaintiff asked Costco to produce text messages on the personal cell phones of two of its employees who mentioned the plaintiff or his allegations.  Costco objected on the grounds that the discovery request required it to invade the privacy of its employees, and there was no indication that the employees sent inappropriate text messages or used their personal phones for work purposes.  The court denied the request, determining that Costco did not have possession, custody, or control of the text messages.

Although the court in the Cotton case ruled that the employer had no duty to produce information stored on the personal devices of the employees in question, the outcome might have been different if the facts had changed even slightly.  Courts in other jurisdictions might also have taken a contrary approach.

The law in this area is far from clear, but following the guidelines below will help a company address e-discovery issues in their policy on personal electronic devices.  An easy way to remember the guidelines is to think of the acronym “APPS”:

  • Access: Reserve the right to access personal devices that store work-related data.  Access is crucial if the company is legally required to collect and produce data residing in the personal devices of an employee.
  • Permission: Clearly specify what personal devices employees are authorized to use for work-related purposes, if any.  Consider keeping a log of authorized personal devices and require employees to update the log whenever they start using a new authorized device or retire an existing one.  Your company’s document retention policy should extend to authorized devices.
  • Privacy: Notify employees that they should have no expectation of privacy to data stored on a personal device if they use the device for work purposes.  This prevents the company from being liable for invasion of privacy should it need to search the contents of a personal device to respond to a discovery request.
  • Segregation: If possible, segregate work-related content from personal content on personal devices.  Segregation can be implemented with software solutions, but if that is not feasible, at a minimum, instruct and train employees who use a personal device for work on how to keep their personal information separate from work data stored on the device.  For example, storage of work-related data in a personal cloud storage account should be prohibited.

Follow the above guidelines to avoid getting caught off-guard by e-discovery requests.

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