Industrial Espionage escalates as 60 per cent of redundant workers take data
Printer friendly
That's the findings of a survey by IT security experts Cyber-Ark from research they carried out into 'The recession and its effects on work ethics' amongst 250 office workers in London's busy Canary Wharf.
WORKERS SCHEMING BEHIND THEIR BOSSES BACKS
40% of workers who admit to already downloading competitive corporate data will use it as a negotiating tool to secure their next post as they know the information will be very useful to future employers.
Top of the list of desirable information that is currently being extracted from employers is the customer and contact databases, with plans and proposals, product information, and access / password codes all proving popular choices. HR records and legal documents were the least most favoured data that employees were interested in taking.
Redundancy is a sore word and rumours that they were looming would send 47% of workers scurrying about prepared to do anything to try and obtain the redundancy list. Half said they'd try using their own IT access rights to snoop around the network and, if this failed, they'd consider bribing a ‘mate' in the IT department to do it for them or bribe their friends in HR.
MEMORY STICKS THE 'WEAPON OF CHOICE'
Memory sticks are the smallest, easiest, cheapest and least traceable method of downloading huge amounts of data, which is why this is often considered the 'weapon of choice'. Other methods were photocopying, emailing, CDs, online encrypted storage websites, smartphones, DVDs, cameras, SKYPE, iPods and, rather randomly yet quite disconcerting, 7% said they'd try and memorise the important data!
Adam Bosnian, VP of Products, Strategy and Sales of Cyber-Ark says, 'The damage that insiders can do should not be underestimated. It can take just a few minutes for an entire database that has taken years to build to be copied to a CD or USB stick. With a faltering economy resulting in increased jobs cuts, deferred promotions and additional stress, companies need to be especially vigilant about protecting their most sensitive data against nervous or disgruntled employees. Our advice is only allow access to sensitive information to those that really need it, lock it away in a digital vault and encrypt the really sensitive data,' adds Bosnian.
The survey into 'The global recession and its effect on work ethics' was carried out by Cyber-Ark's team of researchers amongst 250 office workers in Canary Wharf London.
- Login or Register to comment
- Add to a social bookmarking site
Editor's Manifesto: Tony,meet Bill - don't mention the mainframe
"In an attempt to do the famous 'Charm Thing' with a certain Bill Gates, Tony Blair “got all [his] terminology mixed up”. Whichever Oxbridge-educated candidate ends up heading [fill in appropriate temporal adjective] Labour come the end of September, let's hope they'll be worrying less about the right nomenclature for enterprise computing platforms and more about policies that might get some more wealth-creating industry back in the country.”
Read more
The Dispatch Box: What the UK public sector could learn from Europe’s social media savvy
Neal Perry, Country Manager UK, Ireland & Middle East, at EPiServer talks about how some of the UK's European partners are implementing social media to strengthen citizen engagement.
"Across the World, governments created groups to explore the problems and the potential for strengthening citizen participation in local government. They then reunited the ‘champions of participation’ from countries in every continent to identify lessons and how sharing this experience might inform and shape policy and practice. Social media is one tool where organisations can embrace such initiatives and is an especially effective one when it comes to engaging the younger public." Read more
Innovation: A step too far in the austerity age?
Complete and enter our draw to win a free seat at the e-Government Awards. The public sector is already perceived to be lacking in innovation, but is that a fair assessment, and what role could it play in helping the government meet efficiency targets? What do people working on the frontline of ICT in public sector organisations think? Take part and share your views
David Mitchell Smith, research vice president & fellow at Gartner, discusses Cloud Computing.
Source: Gartner