ITWire

As if the credit crunch wasn't hitting business hard enough, now there's one more thing to consider when looking at the your bottom line: can you trust your IT staff not to steal your data if you make them redundant?

The answer, according to IT staff themselves, would appear to be not on your nelly.

Cyber-Ark carried out a survey into trust, security and password during the 2008 InfoSecurity Europe event, and the results have been published today. Of 300 IT security professionals (although I use that description loosely all things considered) asked, some 88 percent said they would steal data if made redundant.

The kind of data they would snatch, it is revealed, would include the CEO's passwords, the customer database, R & D plans, financial reports, M & A plans and most importantly the company's list of privileged passwords. 

So if you are a business feeling the pinch, you had better hope and pray you have one of the 12% of IT Admins who would be honest enough to leave empty handed.
 
Of the 88 percent who are not honest, a full third said they would take the privilege password list with them. This would give them access to all the other sensitive and valuable documents and information such as financial reports, accounts, salaries and other privileged and highly sensitive information.
 
"When people leave the organisation, they can often still access the network using these passwords to acquire an organisations' most sensitive information" says Udi Mokady, CEO of Cyber-Ark. "You can install the best security systems in the world, but if your staff do not respect the information they are entrusted with, then the information will definitely go astray" he concludes.