Child Maintenance Commission fires staff for computer misuse

FOUR STAFF MEMBERS at the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission have been escorted from the building after using their office Internet connections for watching pornography, online shopping and unauthorised downloading.

Another employee was given a written warning and two others received verbal warnings.

The scandal was uncovered by the email security and data protection company Proofpoint which applied for details under the Freedom of Information Act.

Gary Steele, CEO of Proofpoint, said that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission deals with extremely sensitive issues and data about family issues and it is worrying that staff have been able to access unauthorised sites.

"Apart from the fact they should be doing their work and not logging onto completely inappropriate sites, these employees are risking the integrity of their office computer network," he said.

What was worrying was that porn websites are often used by cybercriminals and hackers to infect computers and one click could crash a network or allow confidential data to fall into the wrong hands. The Agency has access to a large amount of personal data, although it does not look like anything was nicked.

The Leeds-based Commission took over the collection of child maintenance from the Child Support Agency in November 2008. It maintains a blacklist of websites that staff should not access and says it puts filters on its computers to restrict access to them.

Steele said that the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission has taken these breaches seriously and we would urge all employers to adopt a similar stance to the issue of unauthorised Internet access.

He said that organisations and companies should never drop their guard or turn a blind eye to Internet misuse in the workplace because they risk compromising their systems, networks and data if they do. µ