An e-mail, in good faith for help shared with an employee’s spouse, got them in trouble. Confidential information containing personal data, like their exact names, employee Id’s, addresses etc. for over 36,000 employees was on loose when an employee unknowingly shared a file consisting important information with his better half just for a little help.

After a detailed investigation and interrogation, it was concluded that the act was not intentional and the information was not used for personal benefits by the couple further, to be sure the information was destroyed completely from both their systems. 

Boeing discovered the leak on January 9, after almost 2 months from when the email was shared on November 21, taking immediate safety actions, Boeing also addressed, apologized, and offered two years of free credit monitoring to all the employees impacted.

It was suggested By Chicago-based Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) that employees should go under better training processes and should have more guidance on handling sensitive information.

Human errors can have big business impact and need attention to save organizations from loss and embarrassment. A good way to curtail these is a regular trainings on managing sensitive information, workshops on IT Security Awareness and Phishing workshops to not fall for such mistakes easily. (Source: Puget Sound Business Journal)