Information Technology (IT) managers often find themselves in the extremely uncomfortable position of being the IT policy police, infringement prosecutor, and judge when it comes to their companyÂ’s violation-handling policies.

In many companies today, when employees hear that the corporate IT Department has reported to management an online userÂ’s violation of the companyÂ’s IT policy, or that someone from the IT Department has read a userÂ’s personal email on the corporate network, the IT Department runs the risk of doing even greater damage to the already difficult relationship prevalently existing between IT professionals and company online users.

For this reason, businesses and institutions must have a clearly stated violation-handling policy in place at the corporate level before incidents occur. Moreover, if an infraction occurs, the IT manager needs to know what steps he or she must and can legitimately take to get the issues resolved—whether, for example, it is the Human Resource Management Department’s or the IT Department’s responsibility to deal with the infringement.

See Also: Electronic Mail or Email; Risk.