Confidential documentation must be safeguarded.
Corporate confidentiality is proprietary information that unauthorized people outside the company should not know. It is a serious issue. If a competitor learns about a new product you have coming to market, the competitor may try to beat you to market or offer a similar product with additional features. Or, if secrets are revealed, a competitor may file a patent on a device that your company has in development. In a corporate situation, a challenge exists to keep information confidential while also allowing employees to have access to the information as needed.
Confidential Information
A company must define what is considered confidential before requiring employees to maintain the confidence. For example, companies that trade stock reveal earnings at specified dates to the stockholders. The earnings or growth are not confidential after the data is released. Prior to the release, the financial information is likely considered confidential. An employee must understand when and where he can release the information and exactly what is considered confidential.
Confidentiality Agreements
Many corporations require that employees sign a confidentiality agreement which is sometimes called a non-disclosure agreement. According to Entrepreneur, to hold up in a court action, an employee must have agreed to keep information confidential. Typically, signing this agreement is part of the hiring process. This safeguards against a person going to work for a company simply to gather insider information. The employee agrees to keep the company information confidential during employment and even after the employee leaves the company.
Non-Compete Agreements
Along with the non-disclosure agreement, many employees are required to sign a non-compete agreement when hired at a company. A non-compete agreement is another angle on corporate confidentiality. You sign agreeing not to work for the competition for a specified amount of time. For example, if you are a software engineer and you sign a non-compete agreement, you may be barred from working for another software company for several years. This is intended to protect the company from the knowledge you have gained. For example, you may have created some software code to make a process easier. You may understand that you can't use the code at your new job because it belongs to the original company you worked for. However, you understand how the code was developed and could create something similar. It may give your new company an unfair advantage. However, a non-compete agreement can be very problematic if a person gets laid off or downsized at the original company. The person may lose his job, but still not be allowed to go to work for a competing company.
Confidential Determination
Figuring out what is confidential is often an ongoing challenge for both the company and the employees. New products, patents, pending mergers or acquisitions are all fairly well understood -- don't say anything until allowed. However, other information that is handled daily in a company may be more difficult to recognize as confidential. For example, your company may be searching for a new supplier of a product. If the current supplier learns about it, the situation can create problems. Even disclosing customers can be a breach in confidential information. For example, if your company has created an alternative fuel, revealing that your new customer is Ford Motor Company may reveal information about what Ford has in development.
