How to Protect You and Your Company

To protect you and your company from criminal charges, civil litigation, or business loss due to unethical acts of others, conduct a thorough background investigation before you hire employees or consultants, especially if they will have administrative privileges on your systems and network and/or access to sensitive data. This takes extra time, but can prevent a much bigger loss of time, money, and client goodwill (which may be irretrievable) in the long run.

Some other suggestions include

• Give consultants only the access that they will actually need to do the work.

• Require regular accounting of consultants' activities.

• Check billing statements carefully and ensure that work charged for was actually performed.

• Change passwords for administrative accounts after a consultant's work is finished if he or she was given access.