A third of IT workers snoop on their colleagues

One in three IT workers admit to snooping on colleagues using special administrative passwords, says a data security firm.

They admit to peeking at confidential information such as private company files, wage data, personal emails and human resources information.

Data security firm Cyber-Ark questioned 200 IT professionals at the recently held Infosecurity conference in London, and also found that more than one-third of IT professionals claimed they could still access company networks once they had left the job.

More than half of respondents also admitted to using Post-It notes to store administrative passwords. A fifth of respondents admitted they rarely changed their administrative passwords, with 7% saying they never changed them.

This may explain why one-third of respondents said they would still have access to a network even if they had left the company.

The survey also found that 8% respondents said manufacturers' default admin passwords on critical systems had never been changed, which remains the most common way for hackers to break into corporate networks.

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Cyber-Ark >>

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