I accepted the volunteer transition, and my last d official day at Cisco was yesterday. Today I remembered I had created a PowerPoint template that I liked and tried to make a copy (no sensitive information) to a flash drive for my own records. The file didn't copy, and I had a screen pop up saying that I had violated a rule. Will I lose my severance over this? The file didn't copy over, and it didn't have any sensitive information on it - it was literally a .ppt format.
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I left on Oct 30th and copied some of the material from the WTO site that gave me the same warning. I got my severance, dont worry.
I copied a c-ap ton of stuff when I was let go back in '16. Nothing confidential or higher. I definitely copied all the documents given to me by my manager, the checklists, etc. from the LR site and information about my stock plan purchases, health benefits elections, any performance reviews I had (thing of the past), how to return the laptop, how to transfer my Cisco phone to personal liability, etc. There's a ton of stuff you legitimately need to copy.
I write scripts to automate a lot of my work, so I wanted copies of what I consider "industry best practices". Most of them were created by leveraging stuff I found on the Internet to begin with, just tailored to Cisco's environment. I wanted my browser bookmarks too. It's easy to delete all the Cisco specific bookmarks once you import them somewhere, or simply delete the Cisco specific bookmarks before you export them.
I also keep a lot of documents about "how to" do things so that I don't have to search the Internet the next time I need to refer to something I don't do often, but do from time to time. I copied those before I left.
While they didn't have the monitoring in place back in '16, I wonder how soon they they push this monitoring software to your system once they've decided that you're going to be impacted.
Do they copy it after you're notified or before? If before, and it's not a 100% completely silent install, you may get a good idea that you're going to be impacted. If it's after, it's a good idea to disconnect from the VPN and/or Internet as soon as you are notified to prevent the software push to give you time to backup your stuff.
I'll have to remember to make regular backups while an employee BEFORE quarterly end dates, fiscal year end, etc. so that I have my backups done before any nanny software is pushed to me if I return or go to work for a company that operates like Cisco does.
I left on Oct 30th and copied some of the material from the WTO site that gave me the same warning. I got my severance, dont worry.
I hope my reading of this is wrong. Here is my take.
Why are you asking such a pedantic and childish question, unless you want something off the computer to give to a lawyer?
Because, GoogleDocs is FREE. Office365 is available online. And LibreOffice is also FREE. You don't need to use an office computer for this !!!! There are free Power Point templates online, for FREE.
If I'm wrong, I apologize, but here is my advice... for what it is worth.
When someone is planning to sue a company they usually just take a picture of the screen with their cellphone and text message that to their lawyer (on their cellphone)? If the attorney sees that there is a potential lawsuit, wouldn't the attorney be able to subpoena the emails from the company in question?
Please consult you attorney's office and not seek legal advice on "thelayoff.com"?
Isn’t it great that such an expert is so clueless about endpoint management?
It is difficult to believe that you work at Cisco and you do not know the in's and out's of the Network?
Do you know that you could?
*Install a virtual machine
*VMWare Fusion
*Oracle VirtualBox
*Dockers container
*SSH it to server, from lab machine
*Get an encrypted VPN from your home WiFi so they cannot trace it.
I think that maybe this post may have been a prank? I never worked with anyone at Cisco who did not know these basics.
No you will not lose your severance. That said, the security team is simply implementing policies to protect their IP, nothing out of the ordinary these days. And - Cisco would have to show you not only took the info, but used it in an inappropriate manner. That would take a lot of time and effort, and this is nowhere near that. Deep breath, relax, this is a non-event. Enjoy your severance and next chapter!
Why are you still using company PC after your last day?
When the manager gives you the layoff letter, you have a period of time to find another job internally and you don't have to turn in your laptop till after your last day. You can mail it in after your last day.
Just send the documents as an email. Or use cloud services via web browser.
That’s what happens with pasting a single slide and choosing “keep original format”.
It copies in the complete template. Not unusual to see decks with 3-4 complete templates in them.
I have yet to see a modern looking ppt template coming from Cisco. In your defense, say you felt compelled to preserve a chunk of IT history for a museum you're founding. You ought to get extra money actually.
LOL. Nope, Cisco was blocking your attempts to show the world how bad their presentation slide templates are.
I recently received a 6 slide preso that a title slide, an intro slide, three slides of basic info, and a slide with the BU's name on it that was 12MB in size! The slides with basic info only had 3 bullet points each! Talk about bloat and it's not even a pretty preso or even that useful. But let's send it out to everyone in the BU and waste several hundred multiples of 12MB of email storage.
Sure, in the days of quarter, half, and whole TB drives, 12MB is chump change, but a six slide presentation has no need to be that large.
I have yet to see a modern looking ppt template coming from Cisco. In your defense, say you felt compelled to preserve a chunk of IT history for a museum you're founding. You ought to get extra money actually.
Relax. If this is all you tried to copy you are fine. Wait and see if legal contacts you to review your flash drive. If so they will want to delete the files they deem cisco confidential. They know people use co laptops for personal use - occasionally hopefully. Be honest , fall on your sword and don’t destroy the flash drive. They will slap your hand and tell you you agreed not to copy cisco IP. Your severance ought not be affected. With the abundance of recent ER and LR they will probably only contact ppl who have copied multiple files. Good luck. And don’t let ppl on this site bully you by their nasty comments. We all live and learn by our mistakes ...
Why is this confusing? It's your own fault. The rules are very specific, and nobody reading this should pretend they don't understand what happened per the original story description -
You may not use company assets for private use, and anything created on company assets is work product.
You made a ppt template via a company asset - and be honest with yourself here - for company use.
You then arbitrarily decided that since you made it, you have the rights to it. You're wrong and you got caught.
Moral of the story - if you're going to steal something from the company, no matter how trivial, do it ahead of time before they are watching you.
Now...what you SHOULD have done - send it to yourself via hotmail, gmail, google, etc. on your company laptop. They don't seem to be blocking that approach.
As to will you lose your severance - not likely, corporate security and legal will reach out and want to see the USB device you copied it to....don't delete anything you copied to it, as they will know and then you're in trouble.....just explain what you did, fall on the sword and let them delete the file remotely.
It might have “company confidential” written in a footer somewhere.
What was doing it? AMP?
Why are you still using company PC after your last day?
They remotely installed the tracking and blocking software on my pc. They then sent the MSA and I couldn’t email or copy it to my lawyers because of the sw. I had to get HR to email it to my personal address in the end after I had right moan. So I saw the warning multiple times with no consequences apart from really understanding what a total load of muppet heads they were.
It sounds like, one you accepted the voluntary separation package, IT/InfoSec pushed a software package to your laptop to prevent you from taking sensitive/proprietary information.
It probably logged the attempt somewhere and someone may or may not check it and ask you why you were trying to copy whatever you copied.
A PowerPoint slide deck is named with the .ppt(x) extension, not a template. Those are named with the .potx extension. Just because a file is a .ppt doesn't mean it doesn't have sensitive info.
i copied the WTO severence related docs and when it copied the US FAQ pdf it complained the same. the software seems to pattern match some areas. in fact i saw you copy all WTO related information phone numbers etc and i got the warning. it did not copy
No.