Most IT Employees Would Steal Data

Cyber-Ark Software has released the results of a new survey indicating some disturbing facts about insider data breaches by exiting employees.

Cyber-Ark interviewed 300 IT security professionals for their annual survey. This year, 88% of respondents said that, “if laid off tomorrow, would take valuable and sensitive company information with them.” And that’s just counting the respondents who were honest enough to admit they’d act unethically!

When asked what information employees would take, the target information includes: CEO’s passwords, customer database, R&D plans, financial reports, M&A plans and a list of company passwords.

“Most company directors are blissfully unaware of the administrative or privileged passwords that their IT staff has access to which allows them to see everything that is going on within the company. These privileged identities, which lie on hundreds of servers and applications, very rarely get changed as it’s often considered too much hassle. When people leave the organization, they can often still access the network using these passwords to acquire highly sensitive data” – Udi Mokady – president and CEO of Cyber-Ark.

Most companies may be unaware of the full list of admin passwords that an IT employee has access to, and this could prove dangerous. Privileged passwords that access sensitive information should be secured and routinely changed, particularly when IT employees leave.

Other interesting survey results:

• One third of companies believe internal espionage and data leaking has resulted in data going to competitors or criminals
• One quarter have suffered data breaches by internal sabotage and/or IT security fraud
• 35% send sensitive or confidential information via email (an insecure medium, most of the time)
• One third of IT administrators admit to keeping passwords on post-it notes
• One third admit to snooping on the network to look at confidential information like salary details, personal emails, meeting minutes, etc

Via network world ; Clipart via Microsoft / Presentation Pro