Unless you’ve been on a deserted island, you probably know that hackers broke into Ashley Madison, the wildly successful and profitable social network website for married people who want to cheat. They had about 40 million customers worldwide.

So what does this have to do with the workplace? 

Well, it appears that millions of those users, rather than creating a discreet bogus gmail or yahoo account, apparently used their workplace email address to register as a customer. What were they thinking?   You’d guess being dishonest would make you more cautious.

The University of Texas, Sony, Boeing, Bank of America are among the domain names given by alleged users.  By using their employer’s email, these users made themselves easily identifiable.  They’ve not just hurt their employer by debasing their brand and customer trust, but in the case of government contractors, they’ve hurt themselves by  jeopardizing their own  security clearance and therefore their jobs.  For those who used military addresses, (reportedly 15 thousand of the addresses used .mil or .gov) their problems are more serious since in the military infidelity is a punishable offense.

On a practical level, for us this is a great teaching moment. Now is a good opportunity to remind employees about the risks of using company resources for personal use, and  a perfect time to redistribute your electronic communication and email use policy.

What if you don’t have a policy?  Let this motivate you to go find one.  Whether it’s stand-alone or part of your handbook, this is the gist of what a good policy should cover.

1.  The Internet should only be accessed for business reasons.  Don’t use company computer/servers to conduct personal business.
2.  Internet usage can be monitored by the company, therefore there should be no expectation of privacy.
3. Beware of “Discovery”.  A legal term that means lawyers can/will subpoena electronic records and communication if the employee and/or company are ever involved in litigation.

It’s very unlikely that your company or anyone you know will be directly affected by this hack, but these well publicized stories are good opportunities to remind employees of what can happen.  Don’t let a good scandal go to waste.

Related good articles here and here.

© Copyright Eva Del Rio

Eva Del Rio is creator of HR Box™ – tools for small businesses and startups. Send questions to Eva@evadelrio.com