According to a new global survey sponsored by Symantec, 40 percent of employees will take confidential information with them when they leave a job. Robert Hamilton, director of Product Marketing at Symantec, explained to eSecurity Planet that confidential data takes a number of forms.
“Types of sensitive data that employees are taking include contact and email lists, employee records, business plans and even source code,” Hamilton said. “We don’t see people trying to take confidential financial information; it’s all things that are job related and things that will help them with their next job.”
Adding insult to injury, 56 percent of respondents do not see it as a crime to use information taken from their former employers to benefit the competition. “So those people said they would take competitive data and they will use it to help them do their jobs,” Hamilton said. “It’s a dog eat dog world. That’s what I got from the survey.”
Read the full story at eSecurity Planet:
Is IP Theft Ever OK?
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.