Outsourced IT staff fingered porn stash banker
By Lucy Sherriff
Published Tuesday 1st June 2004 15:28 GMT
Porn-surfing bank supremo Michael Soden was caught with his browser down last week by the very same staff he outsourced to HP at the start of his reign at the Bank of Ireland.
Soden hit the headlines last year in Ireland when staff took industrial action in protest of the department's shift to Hewlett Packard. Staff were unhappy about the prospect of becoming HP employees, as they had enjoyed considerable perks at the Bank of Ireland: favourable mortgage and loan deals for instance. Now it seems that he has been forced to resign thanks to the very department which he sent merrily on its way.
Staff informed the bank that they had discovered pornography on Soden's machine on Wednesday last week, during routine maintenance. Soden resigned his post on Saturday, after the internal investigation into the discovery was leaked to the local press.
It would be disingenuous to suggest that the "routine maintenance" was anything other than that, but it's clear that Soden's machine was thoroughly attended to.
The outsourcing move was Soden's second high-profile decision after his appointment as chief executive. His first was to update the acceptable use policy that prohibits staff from accessing porn using company equipment. ®
