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Junior salesmen and female workers between the ages of 26 and 35, they’ve got their eye on you. In a survey of workplace security sinners released March 29 by MessageLabs, IT decision makers made you their top risk. How dare they?
It’s all your fault. You’re tech-savvy, using applications like e-mail, instant messenger, VOIP (voice over IP) and the Web in endless combinations with little consideration of the potential dangers of dividing your concentration levels so thinly. (How dare you, they may have added.)
Who are the vaulted employees, the angels of the cube farm? That would be the male IT middle managers between the ages of 26 and 35 due to their vast knowledge of security matters. (No word on why the male IT managers were better-versed in network security than their female counterparts.)
“Today’s small businesses need to be vigilant about both external and internal security threats. With almost half of all businesses not providing adequate IT security training and the threat landscape constantly evolving, the battle to protect one’s business from online risks is an arduous one,” said Mark Sunner, chief security analyst at MessageLabs.
The survey uncovered some other alarming feelings about network security. More than 75 percent of respondents in the United States and the UK had a fatalistic view of spam, not expecting it to ever cease being a problem. More than 40 percent of the companies surveyed did not provide security training to their staff. And perhaps eeriest, less than half of the organizations surveyed, 21 percent in the UK and 41 percent in the United States, were confident that employees would not cause a security breach.
“A business’s best assets and worst threats can be one and the same, as the worst offenders are likely to be the best revenue generators. Removing the culprits is obviously not an option, what should be removed is the ability to be a threat,” Sunner said.