Internet Misuse in the Workplace

Their in house IT Department had been remotely monitoring the employee for some time; to confirm their suspicions and justify disciplinary action, they immediately employed the services of computer forensic specialists.

CY4OR advised the IT Department to leave the computer switched off once the employee had left for the day - starting up the machine again could damage any evidence making it inadmissible in court under ACPO guidelines should they want to take legal action.

CY4OR investigators visited the company’s offices after hours, imaged the computer and returned to their premises to carry out forensic analysis. Imaging the computer in this way caused minimum disruption for the company, did not alert the employee to the investigation, and yet enabled the CY4OR analysts to carry out thorough forensic analysis.

Subsequent analysis revealed that whilst logged on at work, the employee had indeed viewed indecent images of children; further analysis of the internet browser showed he had also visited websites containing indecent images and had downloaded material from them.

This was communicated in the forensic report to the employer, the employee was dismissed and the police were informed.