A survey by Infosecurity Europe of office workers in London's financial district has found that over a third (37%) would steal company information from their employer if the price was right.

City workers were still fairly scrupulous, though, with around two thirds saying that they would never download and hand over sensitive information.

Researchers from Infosecurity Europe asked City professionals what it would take to tempt them to download and hand over sensitive company information to a stranger, with incentives ranging from a ‘slap up meal’ to over ten million pounds.

63% of respondents said that they would only hand over the data for a million pounds minimum, 10% would do so if their mortgage was paid off, 5% would do so for a holiday, 4% if their credit card debts were paid off and 5% would steal in exchange for the offer of a new job. 2% said that they would give up sensitive information just for the price of a slap up meal.

The type of information that the workers had access to included customer data bases (83%); business plans (72%); accounting systems (53%); Human Resources data bases (51%); and IT admin passwords (37%).
 
Two thirds (68%) of employees think it is easy to sneak information out of their organisation, and 88% of employees thought that the information that they had access to was valuable.

Employee loyalty has also changed since the recession started to hit, with a third of respondents saying they were now less loyal than they were a year ago.
 
'Even in the current downturn British workers are still basically very honest, but this cannot be relied upon by organisations to protect valuable company information and confidential customer data', said Tamar Beck, Group Event Director, Infosecurity Europe. 'Criminals are very adept at finding vulnerable workers who can be tempted into betraying their employers. Organisations should therefore ensure that they have trained their people to protect sensitive information, and have adequate technology and processes in place to help them enforce security policies that comply with current regulation and legislation'.
 
www.infosec.co.uk

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