IT Pros Admit to Retaining Security Access at Former Job Sites: Survey

SAN FRANCISCO - Apparently, security involving former IT employees of enterprises has more holes in it than most people think.

According to a survey released Feb. 16 that canvassed more than 1,000 employees and 500 IT decision makers in the U.S., 10 percent of IT professionals admit they have retained secure access to corporate systems from previous jobs. They also say that they can still get into those systems, even if they have vacated the organization.

The survey results were announced at the RSA conference, which continues through Feb. 18.

The research, commissioned by Quest Software and collected by Harris Interactive, focused on how IT professionals and their employees use policies and technologies to manage and protect users' electronic identities. The results emphasize how control of these technologies, or lack thereof, is causing concern about insider threats to IT security, Quest said.
  
Other findings included:
-52 percent of employees admit that they've shared their work log-ins and passwords with other co-workers, and vice versa.
-25 percent spend more than 30 minutes per day logging into different Websites and databases they need for work.
-90 percent of IT professionals agree that companies need to do more to manage and protect users' electronic identities.
-About half of IT professionals report they are concerned about insider threats to network security in their company's current infrastructure.
-More than one-third say their companies don't realize the value of identity- and access-management technology.

Details of the research are available here (PDF).

Quest Fast Becoming a Cloud System Player

Quest, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif., which started out in 1987 as a toolmaker for simplifying Oracle database management, has been moving swiftly into enterprise security and the cloud-computing platform-and-tools businesses.

Quest has been acquiring intellectual property from companies such as Vizioncore and BakBone to build out these new business strategies.

Quest has been steadily building up its intellectual property in cloud systems and storage management. In August 2010, Quest acquired private cloud-management specialist Surgient. In July 2010, the company picked up V??élcker Informatik AG, a privately held identity-management solutions provider based in Germany.

Quest's product line already includes virtualization controls-the vOptimizer Pro and vFoglight management tools-from Vizioncore.

Quest's application-management products focus on the ERP, Java EE (Java Platform, Enterprise Edition) and Microsoft .NET spaces. Database-management tools include support for MySQL, SQL Server, DB2, Sybase and Oracle.