Prior to my coming on board with this organization, the software media that came with or was installed on a PC was retained with the employee who had the PC. When I came on board, I started doing an inventory and discovered some of the software was gone: terminated employees still had it in their possession or it was “just gone.” I also learned that some employees took the media home to install on their home PCs.
I recommended a new policy which was put in place. All the software media is filed and stored in my department. It makes my job a lot easier tracking licensing and where stuff is installed. The exception is our marketing department. They talked the powers that be into keeping all their own software within their department. This includes such things as Adobe In Design, Photoshop and Illustrator.
Recently, one of these employees screwed up her machine royally. She said she could work on her personal laptop until the problems were resolved. She said she had Adobe In Design, Photoshop and Illustrator on her personal laptop. My antenae went up with this statement. Wow! “That’s a lot of heavy duty software,” I said. “Uh, yeah,” she replied, “I do a lot of volunteer work designing flyers and stuff.”
Okay. Maybe she did go out and buy all this stuff. I’m guessing it’s at least $1500 to $1800 worth of software. But something tells me she used “our” software on her personal PC.
I’m not sure what to do? How to approach her? Our policies state that we must be in compliance with all software licensing.
As I said, it all could be on the up and up. However, given what she did to her computer and what she won’t admit to doing (downloads, trojans, spyware like you’ve never seen, etc.), I’m left not trusting her.
Any suggestions on how you would deal with this situation?