Workers stealing data now in preparation for layoffs

January 5, 2009 by
Filed under: Employee computer use, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security and law 

With the threat of layoffs looming, many employees are stealing sensitive company data, in case they find themselves out of work.

About 58% of employees on Wall Street would take company information out the door with them if they were laid off and knew they could get away with it, according to a recent survey by tech security firm Cyber-Ark.

What’s more, nearly half those surveyed have already downloaded information, such as customer contact lists. Why? They say that information will be valuable to future employers and may help them land jobs.

Others are taking access passwords, company plans and proposals, and product information.

It sounds like many of those IT departments need to boost their security protocols — 62% of the employees surveyed said it would be “easy” to steal information.

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One Comment on Workers stealing data now in preparation for layoffs

  1. Sean Smith on Wed, 17th Jun 2009 2:50 pm

    2. “It sounds like many of those IT departments need to boost their security protocols — 62% of the employees surveyed said it would be “easy” to steal information.”

    Don’t blame IT for this one. This isn’t an IT problem and there’s no technical solution. This is a people problem. Dishonest people with access to things will do dishonest things.

    These people “stealing” the information usually need to have full access to it while working for the company. Even if given “read only” access to things, people still have the use of a pen and paper to write things down. If they’re supposed to have access to it, don’t blame IT for them taking it. Blame the people that hired them and required that these dishonest people get the access that allowed them to steal the information.

    IT can’t stop the dishonest marketing and sales droids from printing or forwarding their contacts list, or copying it down with simple pen and paper. IT can’t stop the dishonest engineer from keeping a copy of the CAD drawings. IT can’t stop dishonest people from using the copier to take their own copies of documents. IT can’t stop someone from printing those documents in the first place if they’re supposed to be able to.