Enron Tapes Provide Security Lesson

June 04, 2004

Enron Tapes Provide Security Lesson

By Mitch Wagner

I have to admit it -- I cracked up laughing listening to the Enron tapes on the news last night.

The profanity-laden tapes recorded the voices of gleeful traders discussing how they manipulated the California power market during the state's energy crisis four years ago.

According to the Associated Press report:

In one transcript a trader asks about "all the money you guys stole from those poor grandmothers of California."
To which the Enron trader responds, ``Yeah, Grandma Millie, man. But she's the one who couldn't figure out how to (expletive) vote on the butterfly ballot.''
"Yeah, now she wants her (expletive) money back for all the power you've charged right up -- jammed right up her (expletive) for (expletive) 250 dollars a megawatt hour," the first trader says.

The whole incident is a lesson that security starts with the end-user. Those traders were on tape because Enron recorded all calls, so that could have records of transactions. Trading companies of all types routinely keep those kinds of records -and they're now also keeping records of e-mails and instant message exchanges.

You don't have to be a megacorporation engaged in massive fraud to have these kinds of transcripts come back to bite you. Even good companies have bad employees, and today's complex regulatory environments mean that even good people can unwittingly violate regulations.

If your company keeps records of electronic communications, employees need to know that they shouldn't say anything they don't want heard on the evening news.

You should also consider deploying e-mail and IM monitoring technology to catch incriminating conversations right away. But be sure to deploy the technology humanely, and only infringe on employees' privacy where absolutely necessary. Employees don't have the right to discuss stealing from customers, but they do have a right to gossip, complain about their managers, and even tell the occasional dirty joke (between consenting adults, of course). That's just human nature.

So why were the Enron tapes so funny? Partly because they were such a cartoonish display of corporate greed. These Enron traders knew what they were doing was wrong, and they just didn't care. Some criminals try to delude themselves that they're actually doing a good thing, but not these guys; their voices had the innocent joy of children torturing small animals.

And part of my laughter comes from imagining those same traders in prison. Maybe Grandma Millie will bake cookies for them.