Companies can spend a fortune securing their IT networks but all it takes is a bar of chocolate and a smile from an attractive stranger to undermine all their efforts.
A survey of 300 office workers in London train stations found an astonishing 64 per cent were prepared to give their password details to a complete stranger after a little bit of probing.
The survey also demonstrated the need to ensure IT systems were protected from unauthorised access and theft of information from internal sources.
Researchers found 58 per cent of those questioned would take contacts or competitive information with them when they left their jobs. One senior sales manager revealed he had left his job the previous week and taken his entire sales pipeline with him.
As many as 40 per cent of general commuters gave their password details after researchers asked if they knew what the most common password was and asked what their password was. Almost a quarter of IT professionals did the same.
The researchers from Infosecurity Europe then asked those who had refused to divulge their password whether it was based on a child’s name, pet or football team and tried to guess what it was. They found 42 per cent of IT professionals inadvertently revealed their password at this stage and 22 per cent of general commuters did the same.
While IT professionals took a little longer to give away their password details, the overall percentage for IT and non-IT commuters was the same, suggesting “that even those in responsible IT positions in large organisations are not as aware as they should be about information security,” stated Sam Jeffers, event manager for Infosecurity Europe 2007.
“It just goes to show that we still have a long way to go in educating people about security policies and procedures – the person trying to steal data from a company is just as likely to be an attractive young woman acting as a honey trap as a hacker using technology to find a way into a corporate network,” he warned.
In another indication of lax security measures that go right to the top, researchers found nearly 70 per cent of those questioned thought their CEO’s password was known to someone else, usually a secretary or PA.
Almost 30 per cent revealed they knew the password of a colleague and 39 per cent admitted they would give their password to someone who called them from the IT department. As many as 32 per cent would give their password to their boss if asked for it.
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