Over 45% of IT pros snitch on their colleagues

Forty five percent of IT workers admit they would snitch you up to the boss if you decide to break corporate rules or access company information that you shouldn’t on the network or Internet, a recent survey from Lieberman Software has uncovered.

Worryingly, 55% admit they would also turn a blind eye to colleagues looking at corporate information that they shouldn’t and just let them get away with it.

The survey looked at the attitudes of nearly 250 IT professionals towards employee corporate security. It revealed that almost a third admit to having more access to sensitive information than their colleagues in other departments, with the ability to look at HR, financial, customer and proprietary information without authorization.

These guys could possibly be the 55% who are themselves turning a blind eye to those who are clearly doing the same.

Other findings showed that nearly 50% of IT professionals believe they could easily gain unauthorized access to their top executive’s most private data, if they wanted to, and just under 40% have witnessed colleagues viewing company information which they shouldn’t have access to.

Commenting on the research, Philip Lieberman, president and CEO at Lieberman Software, said: “These figures highlight a fundamental issue around access to privileged accounts that is causing a significant number of companies to suffer security breaches. IT teams should only have access to sensitive areas of the corporate network when absolutely necessary. Access to powerful privileged account credentials should be audited, available to delegated individuals for a limited time and automatically changed after each use.”