Shocking: One in Four Workers Would Steal Company Information

Nearly five hundred IT employees said they would take company information to help apply for a position at a competitor, according to a workplace behaviour audit carried out by the security experts at Gurcul.

The study also found that thirty-four percent of managed service providers and thirty percent of developers are a main source of third party risk. Also if someone was to commit fraud thirty-two percent said it would most likely occur in the finance department.

“What these findings show is that insider fraud is a top concern among IT security professionals, as are the security risks associated with third parties that have privileged access to corporate resources,” said Craig Cooper, COO from Gurucul who did the research.

“Since detecting insider threats by employees and trusted third parties is the ultimate game of cat and mouse, many leading edge security organisations are using machine learning to compare the behavior of all users against established baselines of ‘normal’ activity. This allows them to identify anomalous events and spot outliers so they can remediate threats early on.”

Key Findings

At the 2019 Blackhat USA Conference, Gurucul conducted a workplace behavior survey to better understand the risky behaviors that pose a security risk to organisations. 476 IT security professionals from around the world completed the questionnaire, of which, more than half work in organisations with at least 2,500 employees.

Some of the reports highlights include:

Nearly one in four people (24%) would take company information to help apply for a role at a competitor
Nearly one third (32%) of IT security pros think that finance is the department most at risk for fraud
Almost three fourths (74%) of respondents tightened up third-party access because of third-party breaches
The third parties that most concern respondents are MSPs, followed by developers
44% of respondents spend at least one hour a day on non-work related web sites (including 32% of those in retail)
The larger the organisation, the more likely it is that workers will surf the web for fun while at work
Browsing social media sites is the most popular non-work related online activity