Davey Winder
Wednesday, 27 August 2008 20:20
Your IT -
Home IT
That seems to be the message coming from the latest Cyber-Ark survey of IT Administrators which reveals that 88 percent of them, if laid off tomorrow, would steal valuable and sensitive company data before they left.
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.