Confidential and proprietary information is secret, valuable, expensive and/or easily replicated. Common examples of confidential information are
- Unpublished financial information
- Data of Customers/Partners/Vendors
- Patents, formulas or new technologies
- Customer lists (existing and prospective)
- Data entrusted to our company by external parties
- Pricing/marketing and other undisclosed strategies
- Documents and processes explicitly marked as confidential
- Unpublished goals, forecasts and initiatives marked as confidential
What employees should do:
- Lock or secure confidential information at all times
- Shred confidential documents when they鈥檙e no longer needed
- Make sure they only view confidential information on secure devices
- Only disclose information to other employees when it鈥檚 necessary and authorized
- Keep confidential documents inside our company鈥檚 premises unless it鈥檚 absolutely necessary to move them
What employees shouldn鈥檛 do:
- Use confidential information for any personal benefit or profit
- Disclose confidential information to anyone outside of our company
- Replicate confidential documents and files and store them on insecure devices
When employees stop working for our company, they鈥檙e obliged to return any confidential files and delete them from their personal devices.
Confidentiality Measures
We鈥檒l take measures to ensure that confidential information is well protected. We鈥檒l:
- Store and lock paper documents
- Encrypt electronic information and safeguard databases
- Ask employees to sign non-compete and/or non-disclosure agreements (NDAs)
- Ask for authorization by senior management to allow employees to access certain confidential information
Disciplinary Consequences
Employees who don鈥檛 respect our confidentiality policy will face disciplinary and, possibly, legal action.
We鈥檒l investigate every breach of this policy. We鈥檒l terminate any employee who willfully or regularly breaches our confidentiality guidelines for personal profit. We may also have to punish any unintentional breach of this policy depending on its frequency and seriousness. We鈥檒l terminate employees who repeatedly disregard this policy, even when they do so unintentionally.
