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Boeing Employee Fired over Laptop Theft
A small mistake had serious consequences for a Boeing employee who had his laptop stolen last month. The laptop contained personal information about present and former Boeing employees (about 380,000), and the company justified its decision to terminate the employee based on the fact that there had been similar prior incidents at the company and employees had been given substantial notice of, and warnings about, the company policy. This policy included a provision that everyone working with employee data was not to download unencrypted data onto their laptop computers.
The data on the stolen laptop was particularly sensitive, as it included the names, social security numbers, and home addresses of many individuals. This information can be used by identity thieves to assume the identity of an individual and incur substantial debt (usually credit card debt) in the person’s name. A Boeing spokesperson has indicated that the company is changing its system by automating security features and removing identifying information (such as social security numbers) as employee identifiers, in an effort to reduce the number of files that contain this type of sensitive data.
Despite the fact that Boeing had a policy, which prohibited the employee from making this sensitive data vulnerable, it is difficult for large companies and institutions to ensure 100% compliance with such guidelines. Boeing’s termination of the employee in question is a very strong response to this problem, which was likely intended to make a statement to other similarly situated employees. While there is no indication yet that the terminated employee will sue Boeing, it is an open question whether this type of termination can withstand a wrongful dismissal lawsuit.
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