IT staff desperate to keep their jobs

Many staff are prepared to steal corporate data as a hedge against losing their jobs

A survey of over 600 IT staff in New York, London and Amsterdam has shown that over half are concerned about losing their jobs, and over a third would work longer hours with a 25 per cent pay cut to stay in employment.

Half of US workers said that they would be prepared to work an 80-hour week, compared to 37 per cent in Holland and 27 per cent in the UK. More than one in 10 US workers would actually consider blackmailing their boss to keep their job.

Some 46 per cent of all respondents said that if redundancies were rumoured they would try and find the list of affected staff. And half of these would use their access rights to snoop around corporate servers or bribe a friend to do it for them, according to Cyber-Ark, which conducted the research.

More worryingly, over half of those questioned had already taken commercially valuable corporate data from their workplace as a hedge against losing their jobs. In Holland the figure was as high as 78 per cent, followed by the US at 58 per cent and the UK at 25 per cent.

"Employers have a right to expect loyalty from their workforce, but this works both ways. And in these dark days, when everyone is jittery especially with layoffs at the top of most corporate agendas, the instinct is to look out for number one," said Adam Bosnian, vice president of products, strategy and sales at Cyber-Ark.

"It would be unthinkable to leave money on a desk, as it is an obvious temptation to anyone passing. Instead it is always safely locked away, and it's time that 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."

When it comes to locking down sensitive data the US is lagging badly. Barely a third of US workers reported that it was getting more difficult to steal data, compared to 46 per cent in Holland and 71 per cent in the UK.