Most employees would steal confidential company information

The majority of IT staff and C-level executives would definitely take confidential company information when they left their organization, according to Cyber-Ark.

Despite 66% of respondents admitting that they would take this information, both C-level professionals (93 percent) and IT staff (86 percent) acknowledged that they had no right to these details (87 percent globally overall).

Survey respondents identified customer databases, privileged password lists and M&A plans as amongst some of the top information that they would take from their previous company.

The survey also found that US respondents had more principles than their EMEA counterparts, as 40 percent of those surveyed in the US, compared to 26 percent of those in EMEA, said that they would not take information with them if they left their current company.

“These statistics highlight all too clearly the ever present danger that exists within an organisation today,” said Adam Bosnian, EVP of Americas and Corporate Development, Cyber-Ark. “If the appropriate steps are not taken, organisations could find themselves with their most valued asset – their data – walking out the door and into the hands of the competition.”

“The results may reflect the relative maturity of the US market, where data protection understanding is more advanced, as compared to EMEA, where many countries are still struggling to understand data ownership,” commented Bosnian.

These results are the latest addition to Cyber-Ark’s annual “Trust, Security and Passwords” global report – the result of online surveys conducted in the Spring of 2011 with 1422 IT staff and C-level professionals across North America and EMEA.

The report found that 25 percent of the global IT staff surveyed still do not have the use of privileged accounts monitored, and that 48 percent of global respondents believed the IT department was the most likely to snoop around the network for confidential information.