You fire them, they take your confidential data!
Terminated employees rarely leave a company without holding a grudge. And when they do hold one, they might take your stapler or some office supplies, but 60 percent of them will take plenty of your confidential data with them when they leave! That was the finding of a study released by the Ponemon Institute and Symantec, quoted by Dark Reading.
What kind of data do they take? It looks like the type that could be of use to them once they have no monthly income: included e-mail lists, employee records, customer information, and nonfinancial information. What about how they take the data and about asking for permission?
Fifty-three percent of respondents downloaded information onto a CD or DVD, 42 percent onto a USB drive, and 38 percent sent attachments to a personal e-mail account, the study says. Seventy-nine percent of respondents said they took the data without their employer’s permission.
Ponemon and Symantec’s forcast is not too bright: as the economy worsens and the layoffs continue, more employees will take private details from the companies terminating them. As the Ponemone analysts explain, once you lose your job, you seem to think there’s not much you could still lose. So people start taking chances in order to feel safe.
So if you’re thinking of terminating some employees today, either hope you can watch them closely, or better yet, get an endpoint security solution that audits file transfers and only allows employees to use approved portable devices. It’s safer that way!
