When it comes to prying into personal information of fellow company employees, many information-technology professionals could qualify for a black belt in snooping, a new survey found.
The survey, which claims to reveal "the hidden scandal of IT staff snooping," is from Cyber-Ark Software Inc., a Newton firm specializing in password protection; its Enterprise Password Vault solution is designed for securing and managing privileged passwords.
The firm said its survey was conducted at a recent security conference in London, where more than 200 IT professionals submitted written response cards or were interviewed.
According to Cyber-Ark, one in three IT employees admitted to snooping through company systems and peeking at confidential information such as private files, wage data, personal e-mails, and human resources data; they were able to conduct such activities because they knew administrative passwords that gave them anonymous access to company systems.
"It's surprising to find out how rife snooping is in the workplace," Calum Macleod, European director for Cyber-Ark, said in a statement. "Gone are the day when you had to break into the filing cabinet in the personnel department to get at vital and highly confidential information. Now all you need to have is the administrative password, and you can snoop around most places, and it appears that is exactly what's happening."
(By Chris Reidy, Globe staff)
