Global Strategy - blog

The protection of corporate intellectual properties is an important issue for any firm, and particularly so for globally operating high-tech companies. Unfortunately, part of the firm's challenge is to prevent its own employees  from leaking corporate information and secrets to competitors. Even if it was only a fraction of a firm's employees -- perhaps 1-5% -- who might have the unfortunate predisposition to make leaks under certain conditions, the challenge is real.

One might assume that a rather basic way of having some control on the leaking is to be alerted in case a firm's employee is sending mails to the firm's competitors. Think about it: If in year 1995, Coca-Cola Corporation's employee John Smith had every Monday an ordinary-looking mail package in the firm's outgoing mail box -- but addressed to Pepsi Co -- I guess it would have been fairly reasonable and legitimate for John's boss to ask John at some point: "What's going on?". In fact, most of us would probably have considered John's boss to be a complete ass if he/she had not asked the question.

Now, somehow some people seem to think that the arrival of a bit more modern mailing technology completely changes this picture.

I mean: Does it change the picture if John, in year 2009, sends the mail packages to the competitor through email instead of traditional mail? Is it now less reasonable or legitimate for John's boss to be alerted? I really think that no, it isn't any less reasonable nor legitimate.

Yet for instance in Finland, many people indeed seem to think that it is outrageous that firms pay attention to where their employees send emails. The debate has heated up, as the government is going it install legislation that acknowledges firms' rights to oversee the addresses of their employees' emails, sent through the corporate email system. (The law in Finland has been popularly called "Lex Nokia", since it tries to protect the intellectual properties of high-tech companies such as Nokia.)

In Finland, it will -- fairly enough  -- continue to be illegal for the firm to open and read the emails, but the firm will indeed have the right to track e.g. the destination addresses of the emails as well as the sizes of the emails. This seems perfectly OK to me. If you hesitate or disagree, just ask yourself if the addition of "e" to the beginning of "mail", or the change from 1995 to 2009, fundamentally changes anything. Again, I really think it doesn't.

Some people might, of course, also be worried that their boss will pay attention to the addresses of the private emails that they send through the corporate email system. Admittedly, it might be embarrassing if your boss comes to know that you're sending regular emails to e.g. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . But then again, you might just send those private mails from your home, using e.g. a free Hotmail or Gmail account, mightn't you. After all, you wouldn't have sent those sensitive private mails through the corporate mail office in 1995 either, would you?