You are an IT department administrator? You have people to supervise (teckies, developers, etc)? Take an eye on them. The problem is that they need information to do their work. Sometimes they don’t find it and ask for it. Sometimes they ask for opinions, review and tips to their pair. There is several ways to ask for this information. Occasionally they use Usenet or Webforums. The problem with these technologies is that all their content is logged. By example, Google get an archive of most of the Usenet groups since ~1997. Most of the times they need to detail their problem to get valuable answer from other users. If he has a problem with the topology of your enterprise’s network, he’ll probably write things about the hardware used, the subnets used and the technologies in place inside your enterprise. At last, most of the time, he’ll ask these questions during is working hours. There isn’t any problem with this fact, but who say working hours also say company’s computer and company’s computer settings like company’s email address and identification. Then they will use their enterprise email to get answers to their questions.

If you understand the problem, you’ll see that you have a post on a Usenet group, sent by one of your teckie or developer, where you have sensitive information about your enterprise’s network infrastructure tagged to it by the email of the so helpful employee.

What you can do? Educate them. The only thing that they want is doing their job. But sometimes they don’t see that they can harm the enterprise by doing this type of things. They only need to be educated to the problem. They only need to be aware of the problem. It’s your job, not necessary their.

If you don’t believe what I say in this post, try it. You’ll be astonished by the results.