The CIO for SMB

If you don’t know about the Karen Owen sex scandal then you probably haven’t been watching the news.

A quick synopsis: Karen Owen is a Duke University alumnus who created a PowerPoint presentation where she rated her sexual partners in excruciating detail, naming names, attaching photos. She happened to email the presentation to 3 friends who then forwarded the email to a few friends. The presentation has gone viral and has spread all over the world. If you would like more details I suggest MSNBC.com (link below).

Why do I bring this up on CIOforSMB.com? What does this incident have to do with small business?

The legal, moral and social ramifications of this are significant. To illustrate, let’s assume you are a small business owner (maybe a doctor or attorney or any small business) and have 20 employees, one of whom is Karen Owen. And let’s say Karen decided to send her new PowerPoint to her girlfriends using the company email account provided by you. Now, based on these assumptions, let’s ask a few questions:

1. Who, if anyone, is liable for the contents of the presentation and email?
2. Can the men who are mentioned in her presentation bring a lawsuit? Who will they bring the lawsuit against? Can they bring a suit against you?
3. Are you liable since the presentation originated from your email servers?

Let’s make a new assumption. Let’s say Karen Owen is not your employee. But one of your employees happened to get a forwarded copy and has now forwarded that copy to 40 of his/her closest friends.

1. Who is liable now? What are they liable for?
2. By forwarding a potentially slanderous email, does a person now become legally liable for its contents?
3. Can the emails that now reside on your servers be deleted? Or are you destroying evidence?
4. How long do you have to retain these emails? How long should you keep any email?
5. If you become dragged into a lawsuit, do you have an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) that will stand up in court?
6. Do you have a Data Retention Policy that is signed by all of your employees that can protect you and your business in court?

Social Media has changed the way we communicate with our employees, our customers and our friends. As an owner of a small business you are not going to eliminate Twitter, email, blogging and Face book from your workplace. But you can protect your business by establishing and enforcing rules for the use of your IT systems and managing the information that is used and retained by your business.

I ran across a whitepaper from Symantec titled, “How to Write an AUP – New Updated Legal Guide” that you might find valuable.

Of course EDDSA has nothing to do with morals and socially acceptable behavior.  But we can give you guidance on navigating the murky waters between those issues and your business’s information technology.  EDDSA can help you write a solid AUP and Data Retention Policy and manage all of your IT systems to insure compliance.

Related articles

• Duke University student’s PowerPoint sex ‘thesis’ goes viral (news.nationalpost.com)
• “Karen Owen’s Duke Powerpoint list leaked online” and related posts (blogs.babble.com)
• Duke coed’s scandalous sex ratings go viral (today.msnbc.msn.com)