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Study Suggests Your IT Staff May Be Snooping On You

by Caleb Johnson on June 10, 2009 at 04:10 PM


Just when you thought records, passwords, and other personal information might be safe at the office, Reuters reports that a new study by Cyber-Ark, a data security company, found that 35-percent of Information Technology (IT) professionals use their digital know-how to access confidential information at work. This marks a 2-percent increase since a similar study was conducted last year.

The 400 senior IT professionals surveyed (in the United States and U.K.) admitted to sneaking a peek at everything from salary details to minutes from board meetings. However, the study found the most commonly snooped data were human resource records. Customer databases, merger and acquisition plans, layoff lists, and marketing information rounded out the list of most snooped information.

This study should be extremely troubling to companies across the world -- particularly when 74-percent of the participants said they could easily access information unrelated to their jobs. Similarly, more participants said that, if they were fired, they would take with them security information and data that keeps the company ahead of its competition.

With layoffs increasing every day, we believe IT snooping will continue until the economy rebounds. Folks are looking for ways to protect themselves, and if fired, land a new job. For some employees, stolen merger plans or customer records might be the difference between standing in the unemployment line and sitting behind a desk. [From: Reuters]

Tags: data security, DataSecurity, employment, information technology, InformationTechnology, it, security, top

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