Tech | June 19, 2008 | 2 comments

IT Professionals Snoop on Other Employees?

source: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369302,00.html

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Do you trust your company's friendly information-technology personnel not to read your e-mail? Maybe you shouldn't.

A survey of IT professionals revealed that one in three admitted reading other people's messages, checking out salary details and going over board-meeting minutes, according to Reuters.

Nearly half — 47 percent — said they'd accessed information that wasn't directly relevant to their jobs.

"All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you're privy to everything that's going on within your company," said Mark Fullbrook, U.K. director of Newton, Mass.-based security company Cyber-Ark, which conducted the survey of 300 IT professionals, in the report.

The report also found that 30 percent of administrator passwords are changed only every three months, while 9 percent are never changed at all.

"For most people, administrative passwords are a seemingly innocuous tool used by the IT department to update or amend systems," Fullbrook added. "To those 'in the know,' they are the keys to the kingdom."
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    Tech,   Big Brother
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2 comments // IT Professionals Snoop on Other Employees?

  • ninthstate
    • 0
      ninthstate  

    • Most people don't know that it's legal for a company to record and archive email, voip-phone, text message, cell and IM messages sent on company networks and or computers/phones. Most large companies do this for HR, insurance, Sarbanes-Oxley, and/or legal reasons and have full time security IT staff that handle this. Plus, these days, companies must hand over records requested by law enforcement... not to mention ISP's.

      Check your companies employee handbook, although all this is usually not stated there because its not a requirement. Make sure you have a personal backup of critical work, files and email in case your company computer and login/password gets locked out due to layoff, firing, bankruptcy, merger, etc.

      Someone in the field said "as a rule, don't text, email or IM anything that you don't want to see on the 6 o'clock news"

      Personally I think that employees working in this area be required to take privacy training.

    • 3 years ago
  • LauraPh
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