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Hey everyone,

I’m running into a situation that I haven’t seen in prior companies. My CEO is also a surgeon, and a few days a week is stuck in the OR all day. His admin, who he trusts, reads his emails to filter out what’s important and brings those to his attention.

The problem is there are emails that should be for his eyes only, and other doctors and executives know that his admin reads them. Because of this, they wait to talk to him face to face which really slows down business. He would like a separate email account that’s private to just him. I see this being a social engineering issue and not a tech issue as you’re training the world to send to your private email in certain situations while other times you want your emails filtered by your admin.

I can easily setup a second account and setup routing rules on his non-private to forward to his private account on certain phrases. Basically using DLP. I’m not stuck on the idea of routing emails or anything really. I’m open to all suggestions except that it needs to stay in the O365 realm.

Added info:

  • We are using Office 365.

  • Need to keep everything in Office 365 for legal and policy reasons.

Has anyone else dealt with this issue or something similar before? Let me know how you’ve handled this. Did you have any problems?

Thanks everyone!

-Mark

76 Spice ups
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The issue i can see you running into (or rather, the user) is that people are gonna eventually stop using the one his assistant can see, and ONLY send to the private one.

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The 2 email addresses is something that sounds good in theory, but in practice I don’t see working. Personally, no way in hell am I going to send certain messages to one address and others to another for the same person. I would imagine there would be more than a few people that would simply send all email to his “private” account. It was his choice to give is admin access to his email, now he’s asking you, and everyone else, to solve a problem that is his.

The solution is simple, don’t give the admin access to his email.

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There are reasons like that, why I never mix personal and company account…

Having that said, either the assistant is a ‘real’ assistant and can read everything, or they can not.

Why are there things that are not for that assistant?

I work at state supreme court, the JAs (justicial assistants) to the justices have full access to their mailboxes. There is no such thing as privacy on an official/work email.

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This sounds like a bad idea all around. I wonder if this gets into any issues with HIPAA or eDiscovery? What content is the assistant not supposed to read? The assistant is an employee and as long as they sign a confidentiality agreement I don’t see what the problem is.

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If they can’t trust the assistant, fire them. The problem isn’t with this one doctor, it’s with his peers who don’t trust people.

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Mike400,

I completely agree about the peers not being trusting people.

Like I mentioned originally this is not really a tech issue.

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Thank you all for the responses so far. I think we’re all seeing this the same way.

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I think that this is purely a question for him.

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Yeah, if they don’t trust the assistant, that’s an HR problem. That’s no different than not trusting the CEO.

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She’s a trustworthy employee, and has worked with him for over a decade. It’s not an issue with the admin.

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I’ve had to deal with private email addresses for celebrities and public personas, but that was purely to filter out the external chaff from the internal business communications. This request is for two lines of internal communications.

Is this assistant known for blabbing? If he can’t trust her to keep her mouth shut on sensitive matters, (and she’s not his wife and/or girlfriend and/or mistress) she needs to be retrained or released. Heck - even if she IS a W/G/M, she needs to be trustworthy…

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It is a pretty common occurrence for an administrative assistant to read/filter a CEO’s email. If you create a new email address, peopling emailing the new one and stopping use of the old one is almost a certainty. If just for the reason people will think they have an in with the CEO. Like SAM says this is a question for him. I would do your due diligence by telling him of the possible pitfalls and then leave it to him.

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Depending on the permissions give to his assistant, you create a subfolder that she does NOT have permission to read, and create a mail filter rule.

If he gets an email that is Eyes Only, have them add a keyword or something in the subject line, and filter it through Rules to move it into that private folder.

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We have the following setup for my CEO/Pres

Primary email address that everyone knows about, he’s had it for years, it’s on his cards, it’s on our website, and it is flooded with garbage most of the time. He uses this one for 98% of his communications. For a while he had an assistant helping sort through his emails, but eventually he stopped that practice.

A few years ago (when we switched to Office 365), we setup a 2nd email address. There are only about 10 people that know that email address and those folks know that this email address is for “eyes only” communication. He may have spread it around to more than those initial 10 or so, but I have overheard him giving it out once and he pretty much made it sound like he was handing the guy the keys to his house and his first born child. He wouldn’t write it down until the guy made several promises to keep it confidential.

I think this all depends on the CEO, and if they want a 2nd email address, we pretty much have to give it to them. Initially they will love it (no spam, only legit important emails), but eventually it will end up like every other mailbox…

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i think that here the issue is that the assistant to the CEO (who is a DR) is having access to stuff that other doctors may see as a violation of patient / doctor privileges or some such thing. because i’m guessing the assistant is not a DR? HIPPA is the fear i would guess? breach of trust?

I have no idea how this puzzle get solved, but im interested in the outcome. keep us posted

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This is easy, One of two things:

  1. Fire the admin, and hire a professional grade executive assistant who can be trusted. This is part of the reason a good EA can collect a six figure salary.

  2. Get people to stop emailing him for scheduling, and have people email the admin.

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Then someone needs to step up, explain that “eyes only” in an executive situation (which, practically speaking, this is) includes the executive’s personal administrative assistant, and start breaking out with HIPAA regulations about sending information to unapproved email accounts.

One would hope that the surgeon himself would be the one to help these nitwits understand proper procedure.

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He needs to learn to trust his assistant a little bit and if not that hire one that he can trust. I don’t think there is anything you could do better and like many said above I see this failing horribly as people will pick one or the other.

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My question is what are they sending that they don’t want her reading? OR… is she reading things that she then blabbers on about? Either way… solve with HR. Fire everyone doing unlawful medical research regarding the cloning of PeeWee Herman, or it’s the secretary and she needs to go.

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