One third of workers would steal data to help friends find a job

Those are among key findings of a transatlantic survey carried out amongst 600 office workers in Canary Wharf London and Wall Street, New York. The study suggests that employers have only themselves to blame as they appear pretty lax when it comes to protecting data. More than half (57%) of respondents state that it's become a lot easier to take information from under bosses noses this year – up from 29% last year. The research, entitled 'The global recession and its effect on work ethics', was carried out by Cyber-Ark. Other interesting findings include that 48% of respondents admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them, while 39% would download competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Says Mark Fullbrook, Cyber-Ark UK director: "While there is no excuse for employees who are willing to compromise their ethics to save their job, much of the responsibility for protecting sensitive proprietary data is the responsibility of the employer. "Organisations must be willing to make improvements to how they monitor and control access to databases, networks and systems – even by those privileged users who have legitimate rights. Additional protection can be added, with simple steps like frequently changing passwords and only granting access to certain information on-demand."