Not all employees may be as trustworthy as they seem.
A new poll has shown that employers may be trusting their employees a little too much when it comes to giving them access to potentially sensitive data.
Security firm LogRhythm commissioned a survey of British firms and found 80 per cent of managers did not believe any of their staff would view or steal information they should not have access to.
However, 23 per cent of employees admitted they had either accessed or even taken data from their workplace at least once.
One in ten revealed they did so on a regular basis, but three-quarters of the businesses surveyed did not have any enforceable systems in place to prevent this and a third did not think they needed one.
Most of the people who took a sneaky peek into their workplace’s records wanted to look at information about their colleagues’ salaries and bonuses.
LogRhythm spokesperson Ross Brewer said: "There is a clear gap between businesses’ internal security procedures and the harsh reality of employee behaviour.
"The number of employers who are doing nothing about unauthorised access across their networks – and the even higher number who don’t perceive any risk at all when it comes to employee data theft – is staggering."
It comes after another poll by Lieberman Software found that many British employees may be deliberately ignoring data protection rules in order to make their jobs easier.
However, the consequences can be devastating. Last year, intelligence services in Britain and the US were alerted after a government employee in Switzerland went rogue and downloaded huge quantities of paperwork onto portable hard drives because he had developed a grudge.
Offsite document storage could be one way of limiting the risks from employees willing to access or even damage data – Dajon Data Management can ensure any potentially sensitive information is retained in a manner that means it cannot be viewed by anyone without authorisation, so feel free to get in touch to discuss your requirements.