Industrial Espionage Escalates as 60% of redundant workers take secrets!

Published 23rd December 2008

Companies warned to safeguard competitive and sensitive data from disgruntled employees facing redundancy
London 22nd December 08 – Sixty percent of office workers faced with redundancy or the sack admit they will take valuable data with them, if they could get away with it! 40% are downloading sensitive company secrets right now under their bosses nose in anticipation that they could lose their job. 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.

To view the full report visit Cyber-Ark’s website at: http://www.cyber-ark.com/constants/white-papers.asp?dload=Ethics-Survey-Results.pdf