Half of workers would consider abusing their IT access rights to snoop on corporate data if they thought their job was at risk, according to a report by security provider Cyber-Ark.
The report, titled The Global Recession and its Effect on Work Ethics, surveyed 600 office workers from New York’s Wall Street, London’s Canary Wharf and Amsterdam.
Alarmingly, 46% of those surveyed said they would take advantage of their IT access rights to scour the corporate network for redundancy lists if rumours of job cuts began to circulate. Some would consider bribing a worker in the IT department to get the data if their attempts were unsuccessful.
56% of respondents said they are worried about losing their job and more than half have already downloaded competitive corporate data to help them get another job. In Holland, 71% said they had already downloaded data. That figure was 58% in the US and 40% in the UK.
Information stolen by workers included customer and contact databases, plans and proposals, product information and access/password codes.
Adam Bosnian, VP of products, strategy and sales at Cyber-Ark said: “Employers have a right to expect loyalty from their workforce, however this works both ways and in these dark days, everyone is jittery especially with lay offs at the top of most corporate agendas – the instinct is to look out for number one.”
“It would be unthinkable to leave money on a desk, an obvious temptation to anyone passing, instead it is always safely locked away and its time sensitive information is given the same consideration. 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.”
