Survey Says: 88% of IT Professionals Would Steal Your Data
Survey Says: 88% of IT Professionals Would Steal Your Data
Posted 09/09/2008 at 4:18pm
| by Paul Lilly
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In the end, it might be easier keeping a problematic IT administrator on board than to let him go. Top level execs take note - according to a new survey, which pinged 300 IT administrators still with a job, a staggering 88 percent admitted they would steal company secrets if they were laid off.
The informationI T professionals not-yet-scorned said they'd take include the CEO's passwords, the customer database, R&D plans, financial reports, M&A plans, and the company's list of privileged passwords. And when it comes to that last one, administrators don't even need to be laid off in order to start poking around. More than a third of those surveyed claimed to have used privileged passwords to snoop on the network, look up salaries, and peek at other personnel details assumed to be private.
"Our advice is secure the most privileged data, and routinely change and manage them, so that if an employee's contract is terminated, whether sacked or made redundant, they can't maliciously play havoc inside the network or vindictively steal data for competitive or financial gain," said Udi Mokady, chief executive of security firm Cyber-Ark.
Sound advice, but is it futile?
Image Credit: IDSafety.org
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dinny
November 12, 2010 at 11:18am
This percent is scary if you ask me, I wouldn't trust anyone with passwords and security data in my company. After reading the results of this survey data center security is suddenly more interesting and appealing.
Wildebeast
September 12, 2008 at 8:36pm
Maybe it's futile.
I'd like to think IT people are more ethical than the guys who sunk Enron & Arthur Anderson. But, if your corporate culture follows the "greed is good" model, what more can you expect?
It's not just "the worst" types, either. The big companies all have made "golden parachutes" and bonuses reguardless of performance [or lack of] the norm.
sirphunkee
September 09, 2008 at 8:18pm
I'm thinking that what this will soon lead to is all IT staff needing to be bonded just to get a job...
Marcus_Soperus
September 09, 2008 at 7:18pm
...must be as important a qualification as a certification or technology skill set. Tech knowledge is a tool that can be used for good or evil ends - and given the difficulty of catching the bad guys in the act, that means that the most powerful barrier to misbehavior among the technologically skillled is a properly formed conscience.
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It's amazing how illogical a business built on binary logic can be.
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