I'm writing on behalf of a friend who was fired today because he installed CCleaner. His employer's crack security team considers it "malware". My friend has just seven days to appeal his termination. I would be extremely grateful for any advice from Piriform employees and customers on how my friend might go about appealing his termination.
Below is an exact quote from my friend's termination notice. The only change I made was to replace my friend's name with underscores. I didn't alter any punctuation, grammar, or capitalization:
Clear evidence was found that ______ violated Information Systems & Digital Usage Policies. Cyberreason information found and reporting, when cross-referenced to the Kronos and video informed us of the suspicious activity and MalWare loaded by ____. It is for this reason ____ is being terminated effective 6/5/2015.
"CCleaner" was mentioned verbally as the "malware" in question. I don't think he has that in writing, unfortunately.
Please volunteer any information and suggestions on how we might go about convincing the appeal board and/or the security department (who will probably be consulted by the appeal board) that CCleaner is not "malware". Are there endorsements from respected authorities we can use? Would Piriform like to give this employer a call? (Probably not, but I thought I'd ask.) Does CCleaner pose a risk to the logical integrity of the registry? (That wouldn't make it malware, of course. The only reason I ask is to try to discern why an IT department might not want it installed.) Please don't feel limited to these questions and volunteer any advice that could be helpful.
If my friend doesn't get his job back, we intend to publicize this as widely as possible, including the employer's name. The firing was flawed on several procedural grounds as well, which I haven't gone into but which even more ridiculous than the factual issue.