Keep your chin up are you not getting any extra help? After all, nobody wants to tell their manager that they might (however accidentally) be responsible for a data breach. Yup! For me, it was like OK, she shared embargoed information something she shouldnt have. You are of course welcome to your feelings, we all feel what we feel, but it sounds like your thoughts and beliefs havent settled to the fact that **your feelings are dead wrong**. OOPS! Our grant program is going to be fully funded by Congress! (Many of these claims have to be handled by specialists who have security clearance, but not all of them.). If its a marketing message, spam, or something that looks entirely unimportant simply delete and move on. This is a bad enough screw-up that I would be contemplating a career change, or at least a pivot to an area of communications where things like confidential information and media embargoes arent ever a factor. They are designed to trick the recipient . Thank you for following up with Alison and here in the comments, and Im sorry for what youre going through. If someone told me something that I know Id have to report, I would report it. Though there are a few that would be exciting. The thing is, its a big deal that you were given confidential information and then texted it to a friend. I playfully made a sexual remark about a female coworker. As a fellow human being, I absolutely get the impulse to tell someone about something! While it is possible the line could be actively tapped/monitored by someone else, even if it was an unsecured line it would be reasonable to assume the home phone number on file for GSA's dad would lead to the dad. It may help in your next position to transpose your thinking around these things a bit. That doesnt seem to be you, which is a great sign. I work within the tech/analytics field. You can get through this, but be honest with yourself! Its definitely not a spur if the moment decision. When we accidentally receive a confidential email from people outside our own organisations, things are a little trickier. By Candice Novak. Not so here because what she did was wrong, just not quite as bad as the misunderstood version. 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. And if I tell anyone, including a coworker ,that I processed said claim, my butt could very well get in a lot of trouble. If someone had been privy to the list of cities prior to the announcement, and leaked it, they would 100% have been fired. Yes, this is the way to do it: Friend, I just got the best news at work, I am so excited! While the 911 caller believes criminal charges are appropriate, that is a matter for the district attorney to decide. We literally filled a room with records for them, and 99% of it was people asking what flavor of donuts to bring to a meeting or requesting copies of informational flyers. But that was the right response to what you did. +1000. I say dont lie during any part of the job application. OP, you truly buried the lede: you leaked to a journalist. Thank you for explaining this! Those usually come out the morning of the speech. But how do I explain this to show I learnt from my mistake and get a new job ? This is a long way to go for a publicity stunt. I hope you find something good soon and can put this behind you. For example, a lot of insider trading is based on the TIMING of someone finding out information. Im sorry this happened to you OP, yeah, in communications at nearly any company this in indeed A VERY BIG DEAL. You want to minimize this, and thats natural. The actual problem is that OP shared confidential information. And if it is a part of that, the coworker was obligated to report it! If it bleeds, it leads, and if its not bleeding, you might as well kick it a few times to see if itll start bleeding Nope. @MarkAmery OP said themselves that what they sent was 'client confidential information' but ruled out trade secrets/IP being involved. Any message that starts with Oh honey is going to read as rude and condescending unless its followed by a sincere Im so sorry in response to something terrible happening. A 40 year old making the same mistake would be much harder to trust later. I wouldnt be obligated by anything other than displaced loyalty if I wanted to try to be squirrelly of course but I respect myself way too much and have my own standards to just keep quiet about things. This is a very astute comment, especially your last paragraph. i think we often send the message (societally) that making someone feel bad is a mean thing to do; its not. Take ownership and accountability of it, because for better or worse, all of us could have made OPs mistake at some point in our careers. There is zero entitlement in saying that shes upset she didnt get a second chance. Moving forward, the best way to handle it is be honest. You shouldnt be upset at your coworker, if anything she should be upset with you for putting her in that situation. In "Labs," scroll down to "Undo Send" and enable it. The information was work i was working on at the moment and I emailed it as I needed to do work on my personal laptop ; I couldn't take my work station away whilst on extended leave overseas. Yikes. the coworker? Theres an element of common sense to be used. Quite recently, a client of my firm contacted us to say they had heard staff in a bar gossiping about another client. Thanks for sharing all of this. If I know that Senator Y is releasing a health care plan on Monday that would require mandatory surgery for every American, and he has bipartisan support for it, thats a much more specific news tip, and Id rather my friend just not tell me and save me the heartburn. how do I tell employers I was fired for a video I put on YouTube? No. Hi LW, I agree with Alison the best way to approach with is by taking full ownership of what happened. I disagree. That said, I am curious if theres other context that explains why they fired you for a first offense without warning you first. A first offense is still a breach in trust. A further 2 years can be added onto the sentence for aggravated identity theft. An employer of mine got a FOIA request where they asked for every email wed sent to anyone from any regulatory agency. I previously worked as a journalist. Both the affected parties were amazing clients who prided themselves on solid security practices. In some cases, those policies . Its always easier, at least to me, to close your mouth than open it. That was not an enjoyable situation at all. Thats an important impulse to explore to avoid other similar situations with gossip. Both your friend AND your co-worker. She broke a very real and important rule. Its a great professional resource with a lot of professional development around ethics. Sometimes people screw up and they still really need their jobs. This was a person whose reviews had been glowing up until that moment and I am sure they are still upset that this came out of the blue. It can be exciting to know whats going to happen before it happens, even when the news itself isnt *that* thrilling. Its unfortunate that LW lost her job over it but the coworker isnt to blame for LWs decision to disclose information they werent supposed to. If you can trust someone, you can trust them, journalist or not. Unfortunately accepting responsibility doesnt always work in some workplaces, it just digs your hole. Between that and having family members who have been laid off and lost access to their work account that they used for personal use as well, I have learned to keep work and personal email accounts separate. If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. While it clearly appears LW would not have done any of this, the regulations and policies are written to protect the employer and coworker from any potential negative actions. All rights reserved. You can get past this, if you learn from the experience. Based on it happening before GSA was born, this most likely happened on a land line. You learned, BOY HOWDY did you learn, and now you dont mess around not even gossiping with co-workers or any of those other little ways that could instill doubt in your discretion. I worked for a federal government contractor and we were awaiting news of whether we were getting a contract renewal. A number of US governmental agencies specifically require that the co-worker NOT tell LW that she will be reporting this to management. A breech of confidentiality like that can land you and others in jail. Count your blessings that you just got fired. And most of the real socialising happened at house parties and dinner parties, not restaurants or bars. So- bad judgement buddies? Am I likely to be rehired after being fired for misconduct? While irritating, email from mass marketing lists dont require a response and you probably wouldnt get an answer anyway. But there was no way we were actually going to get the contract now if they didnt. Noooo. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. ), You also werent fired for technically breaking a rule. You were fired for actually breaking a rule, and a serious one. That guilt is because you KNEW you did something that was explicitly not allowed, and you went to your coworker in the hopes theyd absolve you of your guilty conscious. This is a very important life lesson, both for your professional and personal life. Hes in an unrelated field, it doesnt affect him at all, and he wouldnt really care outside of knowing whats going on in Eddies life but hes a chatterbox and theres a decent chance hed forget and say something to someone. Egress Intelligent Email Security is an example of human layer security, as its able to adapt to your individual behaviour through machine learning. Its the Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust. that did it for me (especially after all the ways the OP dodged responsibility in the original letter). So you let the cat out of the bag about the cat your zoo bagged? Well, this is both unkind and off-base. In most reporting policies i am aware of it would be considered tipping off and get the person reporting in trouble. Heres another the state Supreme Court will probably make a decision on voting district gerrymandering soon., (This one happened to me, and was probably the most exciting confidential information I got access to my desk was close enough to the GIS employees that I could see the increased traffic out of their area and infer that Something was Happening. I was fired for technically breaking a rule but it was my first offense, and nothing bad actually happened, and Im definitely learned my lesson. Also, no matter how good a friend someone is, if they are a journalist you need to zip your lips. Its going to be a hurdle. Nothing dangerous, and while I was there it honestly wasnt even anything that would be a big scoop or exciting dinner party story. There are many ways to say thing like this without lying. Good Lord, no. Is there a single-word adjective for "having exceptionally strong moral principles"? how to explain you were fired, when interviewing. I think the fact finding phone call cleared that up, otherwise OP would have said so? and sent to multiple people (!!)? whatever you think is appropriate] to make sure it doesnt happen again.. 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. (They could be facing prison time.). but to start the process of damage control. Contact the recipient Get in touch with the recipient as soon as you notice the mistake and ask them to delete the email without reading or sharing it. Forgetting to attach a mentioned attachment is common, but still embarrassing. Agreed. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. Thats the wrong lesson to learn. Every hospital Ive worked at requires yearly HIPAA compliance training. Its also true that people do break confidentiality for a variety of reasons, but people who are really really REALLY aware that they are breaking confidentiality and how big the consequences of it are, are also on top of not leaving a footprint that can be traced back to them. My mom worked in sunshine law for state government, and what constitutes a record is a lot broader than most people realize. And you might know that you trust that friend 100% to keep it confidential but your employer would prefer to make that call themselves, and thought theyd done so when they told you the information couldnt be shared. Its not great, but some breaches really are that serious, and employers cant always be like the library giving amnesty for late fees if people bring the books back. But when I wrote letters to the llama farmers whose llamas had bitten a client whose story about her life-threatening goat allergy was featured in the papers (obviously this is not what actually happened), I had to be sure I didnt say anything about the llama farmer letters that could link to the goat story. I wish I lived in your country. Now, hopefully that would never happen, but if you consider reporting serious breaches to be ratting out, narcing or even tattling, your (potential) employers are going to know that you cant be relied on to report when its necessary. As Alison said, its a lot like DUI; even if no one gets hurt, theres a reason we shouldnt take those risks. Ive had the occasional day when Ive really wanted to tell someone I met X today! People have gotten jobs in their field after vastly more serious forkups, don't despair. Dan is such a pain! I gossip too much, including at work. I have information that I have kept confidential for more than a decade that I know the patients wife does not even know (think undisclosed criminal record). If OP had confessed to their manager, it would make sense for the manager to say, I have to report this to such-and-such, but the coworker was right not to warn OP. It stinks but in this industry, thats a deal-breaker for many. I do not believe in using it for personal gain, even the minor personal gain of sharing juicy secrets with someone. Obviously telling the friend was the fireable offense here, Im not arguing that. Many, many of us in similar positions have made similar mistakes. Alisons given you great words to say now its to you to live out your learning with sincerity and build trust with a new employer. Share information about the new roller coaster being put in at a theme park? "It is likely not private if the employee used the employer . Or at least, I can. 2. Best wishes! I dont know if it was to avoid track-covering or to prevent retaliation, but that was a specific part of the procedure. 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. They may. Id stay under a cloud of mistrust if that meant a steady paycheck if I didnt have anything else lined up. I agree that the companys response was wrong the sexual harasser should have been fired but in the US, authority doesnt care. For the purposes of VIWI, a confidential client shall be able to establish a mutually authenticated TLS channel with the auth server and resource service, providing a trusted identity, usually in the form of a certificate signed by . The message there is dont violate confidentiality policies. If you are facing much trouble, look for job in domains where confidentiality is not too critical and the employer is not paranoid about it. But if youre singling people out, or only using it in the context of chastising someone, then yeah, for sure condescending and rude. Its a big difference if you sit together at a bar, your friend mentions chocolate teapots and you say oh, this morning I was asked to design a llama-themed one before you realize that you really shouldnt have said that. We asked them why they did it. For many fed and state agencies, non-public records _must_ be released on a records request despite their non-public status unless they fit into a narrow set of explicit exemptions. Yes, some employer will bin you, others might give you a second chance. Ethically, you dont have to do anything. Im not curious at all, but Im different. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. If you own your mistake, meditate on it, learn from it, and learn to tell the story of how you learned from it, then you might be able to get another job in the communications industry working for a company that does not handle sensitive client data, or in another industry where there are no potential confidentiality issues with your job. Ramp up your privacy settings across all accounts. She just needs to learn discretion. If you want to work in comms, you need to be crystal clear that the TIMING of disclosure is a crucial issue. I can't remember the details, but there was a point about the fact the word "confidential" added in every e-mail by such a notice wasn't actually helpful, since tools that looked for the word confidential were flagging everything up, including a large number of false positives. I strongly disagree with this. Oh, dear. Was the friend a journalist, or is there something else that would explain why she said that? The reply: Yes, the friend I texted happened to be a journalist but doesnt cover the area that I was working in. This is NOT a myob type situation at all. I want to encourage you to drill deeper on something you said in your letter: I did feel guilty. You might not immediately get the same job you had before and might have to accept something more junior but be clear in your communications and you'll get there.