IT fuels intellectual property theft

Intellectual property theft is costing UK businesses billions of pounds each year, and is getting worse because of the ease with which electronic documents and files can be stolen.

Some 70 per cent of the 400 workers polled by computer forensics firm ibas confessed to stealing corporate secrets when they left their last job.

The most commonly stolen forms of intellectual property were email address books (taken by over half of all leavers); sales proposals/presentations (32.6 per cent) and customer databases/contact information (30.4 per cent).

The most common method for stealing was sending electronic copies of documents and files to personal email accounts.

According to the study, just under a third of respondents put intellectual property theft in the same league as exaggerating an insurance claim.

The most common justification for such theft was that the employee had created the documents and felt that they partly belonged to them.

Women are around 20 per cent more likely than men to consider taking documents and files as acceptable given the same scenario.

But men were found to be 28.6 per cent more likely to actually go ahead and steal corporate intellectual property.

"UK businesses are losing billions worth of intellectual property every year," said Simon Janes, UK managing director at ibas, in a statement.

"Unless urgent action is taken, the problem will only get worse as IT is making it easier. 30 years ago it would have been virtually impossible to steal a filing cabinet's worth of documents.

"Today, employees can quickly and easily copy the same amount of information onto a disk and slip it into their pocket on the way out of the door."