Imagine this: You work for a company in a high level post dealing with trade secret information. When you got the job, you took an oath to safeguard this information.
For five years, against protocol, you took sensitive documents home, and you leave them strewn around your desk when you’re away. After the first year, the company implements a policy specifically forbidding this practice.
You also live in a bad neighborhood — during this time there has been a Chinese gang breaking into the neighbors’ houses. One of the neighbors even owns a home security company. They never noticed anything was missing until copies of their home videos surfaced on ths internet, and the Chinese gang actually bragged about it. They say there’s no lock they can’t pick, and no alarm they can’t bypass. During the last year you set up a hidden camera to see if you can catch them in the act, but no intrusion was captured.
The home intrusions in your neighborhood are well known. Finally, your employer finds out that you’ve been taking documents home and sends a security guard home with you to see if the house was broken into.
The security guard finds there are no signs of forced entry. There are no muddy boot prints on the kitchen floor. He quickly declares that your home wasn’t breached, and your boss reassures his customers that all of their information is safe. Some of them aren’t satisfied and won’t be until a forensics team dusts for fingerprints. But you tell them the guy who looked around said everything looked fine and there’s no obvious proof that the house was broken into.
Do they have reason to doubt your reassurances?
Do you think you deserve a promotion?