There is a greater issue here regarding judgement. 2.) Everyone makes mistakes at all points in our careers. It can bring vital information to the public who have a right to know. Some are minor, some are devastating. I do a lot of trade shows and we always remind booth staff of what to say (talk points) and what not to say to trade journalists. If anyone required training to answer FALSE! They take information security and confidentiality so seriously that they make delivery people who come to the offices sign an NDA just in case they were in the elevator with Sam Jackson. Many, many of us in similar positions have made similar mistakes. Or maybe one of those people isnt quite as trustworthy as the person who told them thought they were, and they tell the wrong person, or tell multiple people, or write an article about it because theyre also a journalist. We asked them why they did it. Check out this article on that HERE. Thank you for following up with Alison and here in the comments, and Im sorry for what youre going through. Trying to tell the OP otherwise is to minimize the impact of a serious offense. I think the wider point is that anyone can make that mistake at any age, and speculating about this part of it is irrelevant and not helpful. Then the second paragraph said Do not release this information to anyone outside of the office because the press are not to know about these changes until the morning of the event. Both the affected parties were amazing clients who prided themselves on solid security practices. You undertook those actions while working for (1) A Large Governmental Organization, who is answerable to Congress and to the general public for the actions undertaken by their employees, in the (2) Communications department, which is a department where employees will specifically, systematically, regularly be exposed to confidential information that should be kept confidential until such time as it is explicitly said to be something that can be shared publically. Maybe you get a 2nd chance IF you were contrite enough and blamed your excitement at the new teapot program. I found out accidentally.) Im now turning my head sideways and re-reading/rethinking. The coworker is not a rat or at fault here. Thats why your organization wants it to stay within their walls (and possibly HAVE to keep it within their walls by law)they cant control what outside people do, whether theyre only one person removed (your journalist friend, who apparently DID keep the secret in this case) or hundreds of people removed if the gossip chain goes long enough. But imagine you are the government and someone leaked information. Same here. I was wondering the same thing. I used to work at a government agency and it was super hard to get fired so I can understand your consternation. You kind of glaze over this, OP, but if you spoke in this meeting as you did here then I wonder if thats the real reason for the firing. In a professional context, close friendships and personal trust arent always as ironclad as they can be in personal relationships, particularly when it comes to security and confidentiality. And definitely let go any butthurt about your coworker they did nothing wrong and followed clear policies on reporting this incident. If you got the launch codes for the missiles, thats a big no no to share. In this situation, it is acceptable to make 'fear of attachment' jokes. was. Oh honey, how young are you? I gossip too much, including at work. All three have kept their mouths shut, at least to the best of my knowledge, and I can talk it over without worrying that I will cause a problem with my disclosing. Site design / logo 2023 Stack Exchange Inc; user contributions licensed under CC BY-SA. This seems unnecessarily condescending, and I dont think the LW sounds defensive here at all. No, no, no, no, no. Forgetting the attachment. Depending on their responses it ranged from retraining, to suspension, to immediate dismissal.. 3. I tell the character and imagine their response, and the urge to share subsides. 100%? you can include that in there too, not as a way to cast doubt on their decision but as a way to indicate this was a fluke, not a pattern of bad judgment. Its going to bite someoneand this time the person it bit was herself, which gives her a good opportunity to work on discipline and discretion. Best wishes! I would not immediately snap into how can I report this? Thats also real life. That really set the tone for the reference she gave. Basically, one of the key ways that spies get information is by social engineering picking up seemingly minor information through friendly chat that they can then combine together to make more. Its also something that happens in a business relationship rather than a personal one, because the assumption is that personal relationships are entirely off the record. Man I am swamped with the publicly known project I am barely treading water. (Plus, were not sure how much of the inflation came from the coworker and how much came from their superiors. In an ideal world, it doesnt happen at all. Thank you for saying that feelings are never wrong. Id like to know what LW said at the two meetings they gave her before firing her. Someone would then check into it to see if there was a valid reason for someone to be poking at it. Wouldnt you ask why the govt didnt fire them the first time? Which is so far beyond the truth Im honestly wondering if this coworker had it out for me the whole time. Then your story isnt just I did something wrong, they found out, and I got fired, its I did something wrong, I knew it was a mistake and told a senior member of my team about it, and as a result I got fired. The more you can acknowledge that you took responsibility for your mistake, the better it sounds for a potential employer. We just had something similar happen at my office last week. A large part of this is creating the interest that will drive The Thing, and the market/desirability of The Thing. A good . FIFTY?! The fact that the LW just couldnt resist sharing this tidbit should have been a red flag that maybe her friend couldnt, either. As others mentioned, the breach is possibly a fire on first offense potential, but since they fired you after investigating slack that makes me wonder if you had too casual and friendly of chats with the journalists whose job it was for you to talk with. It wasnt particularly kind to her friend, either. If you had stayed they would have never trusted you again.. It only takes a minute to sign up. If asked specifially try to describe in detail what happened and what you learned from it, for example: ask if the new employer has clear guidelines on data handling. Build sneaky protections into your life so you get away with violating important rules is NOT what LW needs to learn. Yeah, Im wondering that too. Once its out, you have no control over it. I come across soooo much incidental information about people I know in the course of this job. In some cases, there can even be criminal charges for knowingly releasing certain information. A member of the public wants some data, they contact anybody in the agency they can think of, the internal employees bounce it around because somehow they dont know who to send data requests to, and finally it gets to us and we respond. Spek raised a good point- find out what your HR policy is so you know what to be prepared for in an interview. Later when I moved on, it became my absolute best interview topic when asked about a mistake and how I handled it. I work in communications for a large organization and I see this as a trust issue with leadership. Im not curious at all, but Im different. A 40 year old making the same mistake would be much harder to trust later. 2) Told someone you broke a rule. I used to work for Marvel Studios. The violation was only victimless by accident and confidentiality rules dont hinge on whether or not the leak is known to have caused damage. Its a huge risk that if discovered by the employer would likely result in being blacklisted from the company and if the LW is employed there immediate termination. Another engineer girl here, at a place where people have been fired for leaks and it hits the news when it happens: theres a warning during New Hire Orientation, and between that and our reputation, youre expected to know it. In that case its not so relevant that there was a misunderstanding. Remember to be kind to yourself: youre human, you made a mistake and, as you said, youve learned from it. Tessian Cloud Email Security intelligently prevents advanced email threats and protects against data loss, to strengthen email security and build smarter security cultures in modern enterprises. And then THAT person got so excited that they just had to tell someone Each person thinks theyre only telling one other person, and that they can trust that person. and sent to multiple people (!!)? It doesnt, but we still shouldnt state assumptions like facts if theyre not supported by whats said in the letter and theres nothing wrong with Michaela pointing it out. If someone stole money from their workplace, or illegally harassed a coworker, and their colleague reported it would that person be a rat too? You are disappointed you didnt get a second chance. This mixed with the coworkers inflated story, I would be more than annoyed by this coworker too. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. the coworker had an obvious physical feature that the poster mentioned, so the company was able to figure out who was discussing it in a public place and *fired* them for it. Agreed. That will go over much better with future employers. This is an issue in most fields. Candidate must then come up with a good reason why former employer wont re-hire given they merely eliminated the position. In a truly dangerous/vital public information sphere there are agency heads/regulators/IG offices/congressional members/even the police depending on the issue that you should contact before going to the press. (And yes, the records request would come through the custodian of records, but the point of my second paragraph is that non-public information does not have special protections like confidential information and that the general public has a right to access that information as soon as it is available, and not just when the agency finds it convenient to send out a press release.). Ive been poking around in our payroll system for the last two weeks. Right? In a roundabout way, they somewhat did you a kindness by firing you. Mostly, Im saying this to you so that you understand that you should never have trusted that co-worker to keep that kind of information to herself, no matter how much of a mentor shed been to you I do think that she should have told you that this was serious enough that she couldnt not report it. It has to be violent sexual assault before theyll even consider responding. Let me be clear she did not leak it. When you don't know the sender, but the email is clearly confidential and sensitive, things are little more complicated and you have a decision to make. If it does, you can explain calmly that in a moment of weakness, you broke a serious rule regarding sending information to someone outside the company, but youve learned a hard lesson you never intend to repeat. Many Government Agencies have specific rules about reference checks. Negative emotions are a learning toolfeeling guilty is very uncomfortable, so we dont repeat the behavior that led to the feeling guilty. These policies are sometimes written down in employee handbooks. This is not about a public records requestits about how information is released to the public before that information becomes public. Agreed. Once you do it, the consequences are the consequences. It is not clear at this stage whether the 911 caller will be pursuing a civil claim for damages as a result of the privacy violation. I went to a church where I attended youth group, sat outside, and repeated my news over and over to Jesus for about three hours before I felt certain I could keep it from anyone else (note that no one else was anywhere nearby). Its also possible that she got caught in a broader crackdown on leaks and thus wasnt given a second chance when she otherwise might have been. But thats where having friends in the same workplace comes inyou can expend the impulse by gushing to them and then zip your lips once you leave the building. I hope you mean it when you say you understand the magnitude of this mistake and why you were fired for it. Perhaps the email was intended for a client in which case the clients data is at risk and the sender has inadvertently committed a data leak. They might push the company to reverse your termination. Sometimes when we receive an email meant for someone else, its just spam. But OPs situation sounds like more of a case of I am just soooo excited about Cool Thing that I had to tell rather than something dangerous or corrupt is going on and the public should know.. This is an actual security headache/nightmare for my government department as its so common for people to go out to lunch and start discussing what theyre working on while eating. Perhaps something like the announcement of the new Amazon HQ? The LW blabbed, why would her friend have more self-control? Accidents do happen, we are all human but what rights you have if you share private company information by mistake really depends on a few things: the type of information that was accidentally distributed, how this impacted your company, and what the consequences were for you. This is why you never ever confidentially share work-related things with colleagues. Youve got some great feedback from Alison and I hope it all works out for you. Theres no such thing as blind-siding once youve committed an infraction and people have to act on it. This is essential to sanction the employee and also send out a clear . I am in this place when I read OPs response. Besides the stuff that has already been discussed upthread like potential for insider trading, unfair advantage in things like competing for federal contracts or grants, or derailing a communications strategy, one of the biggest reasons to keep work information private is due to counterintelligence concerns. Quite recently, a client of my firm contacted us to say they had heard staff in a bar gossiping about another client. Sometimes their hands are tied too. I actually think your big mistake was telling your coworker, not telling a trusted friend.. You are fortunate to get the opportunity to learn it early when it hasnt resulted in severe long term consequences. Especially odd because LW emphasized how trustworthy the friend is for why the friend wouldnt blab. Oh, I wish Id seen this before replying. I used to be a journalist, I have lots of friends who are journalists and I never tell them anything that I shouldnt, even the ones I really trust. This is one of those very serious offenses for which there are no second chances in many organizations, even when the breach is accidental or through slop practices and not intentional. As a government employee they are obligated to report a breach of information regardless of whether they like the employee they are reporting or hate their guts. If you had to process the cool news, it may have been better to process with the mentor instead. She showed no contrition or reflection. The penalty for breach of confidentiality isn't restricted to employees who have . I dont know the full text of the conversation and I dont want to, but she was probably in a position where she had to tell someone.