Terminating an employee for poor performance or misconduct is not simple. If inappropriate employee Internet usage supports your decision to remove an individual, it is important that you dot your “I’s” and cross your “T’s”. The more documentation you have supporting Internet usage, the more likely you will be to prevail should an ex-employee file a wrongful termination suit against your company.It may be required that the data used as a basis for your decision to terminate an employee withstand a defense assessing that the data had been altered. The employee Internet control solution that you deploy should include data verification mechanisms on captured and stored content that can withstand chain of custody requirements. A unique time-stamped event record should be generated for every Internet session that is attempted by an employee. This identifying record should include the Internet address or site, subject or title of the site, date and time of the transaction, the reason if a restriction occurred, the user name, machine name, physical machine address and a signature (or fingerprint) on the logged event record. If your employee Internet management solution includes chat monitoring, IM Monitoring, or email monitoring, the solution should also include an associated file signature (or fingerprint) of the logged content. These unique identifiers improve the evidentiary integrity of each record and produce forensic quality data that can be used to support compliance auditing and investigative activities on specific employees.