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Nearly Half of IT Workers Snoop in Confidential Files

pcworld.com — Nearly half of IT workers have admitted to snooping around networks to look at confidential information, according to research from software firm Cyber-Ark. "When it comes down to it, IT has essentially enabled snooping to happen. It's easy -- all you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you're privy to everything that'

Who dugg this? Made popular Jun 22, 2008

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  • notBrit, on 06/22/2008, -0/+102And the other half is lying.
  • sterntastic223, on 06/21/2008, -1/+90CoughIdothisallthetimeCough
  • wush, on 06/22/2008, -0/+48salaries.xls
  • s6t9eve, on 06/22/2008, -0/+45I access systems i'm not meant to at work all the time, it helps break the boredom of the day.
  • Noncentz, on 06/22/2008, -1/+31... Yeah.... Ive done it, and I liked it to.....
  • LMControl, on 06/22/2008, -1/+28And in related news, the sun will rise tomorrow and swimming in the ocean has been found to get a person wet.
  • inactive, on 06/22/2008, -0/+24In other news, over half of IT workers lie on surveys.
  • jcaino, on 06/22/2008, -0/+20Sometimes it -is- part of the job. I've had to check mail files for header information, look at proprietary code, examine database queries all in effort to assist the customer. However, being a professional, I really don't care about what the actual content is, I just want to get the issue solved. Besides, I -like- where I work and plan on having an enduring tenure there.
  • inactive, on 06/22/2008, -1/+15Start -> Microsoft Office -> Excel -> Open File

    Remember, we're talking management and/or HR here. How the hell are those knobs gonna know SQL?
  • t4m5t3r, on 06/22/2008, -1/+13and what, i am in IT guy,i have had a "look" around before one some systems, however if i did anything with that info , it wouldnt be hard to trace it back to me! (in fact in a corporate network enviroment it would take only a fews mins to see who accessed what and when, on an end users PC, it wont be hard for them to know who that last person to deal with their computer was, so i dont realy see the point of this?

    exactly what would people be that worried about other people finding? (as i said you can do much with the info anyway, unless you illegaly broke into somewhere and theres no way of knowing who was there)

    i think this is just a scare story so that managers panic incase some IT guy found their collection of porn! lol
  • Marines920, on 06/22/2008, -2/+13I wonder what IT companies were sampled in this study.... I work in IT for a major bank and our security controls are tighter than a duck's ass (don't ask - I don't know what a duck's ass is like). These companies really gotta monitor who they're giving access to...
  • carpespasm, on 06/22/2008, -1/+12Well someone has to keep wikileaks fed. Might as well be the ones who can erase the log files.
  • JKAL, on 06/22/2008, -0/+11no, the other half have done more than snoop around.
  • desuexmachina, on 06/22/2008, -0/+10Speaking from the other half, I don't snoop in other people's files because mostly they're boring. I've got Digg to read at work, no time for reading about babies and graphs.
  • dark1587, on 06/22/2008, -2/+12Yeah... I saw this story on slashdot the other day, and I'm not sure how '1 in 3' measures to 'nearly half'. I think they have a fraction for '1 in 3'; maybe it should be call 'one third'?

    Here's the same story from MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25263009/
  • notBrit, on 06/22/2008, -3/+12Yeah, 50% is way too low.
  • jvav2486, on 06/22/2008, -2/+11You didn't ask anything...
  • NavS, on 06/22/2008, -0/+9I don't look in peoples stuff, because I don't give a *****.
  • thetayloreffect, on 06/22/2008, -0/+8You learn a lot about your coworkers very quickly when you're digging around in the SPAM quarantine for false positives. It never ceases to amaze me how many people use their company email for personal business... and it amazes me even more when they have the ***** audacity to complain about personal items getting filtered by our SPAM appliance.
  • themisanthrope, on 06/22/2008, -1/+9And *I* think it is too high. As an IT guy myself, ethics are in large part why I do not snoop. The other reason? Just not all that interesting.
  • notBrit, on 06/22/2008, -1/+8So... you have never pirated software. Never used a backdoor. Never used a cracked copy of Windows. Never shared music. Never used torrent files. Never used another person's password. Never used another person's computer without first asking permission. Never gone to a LAN party to play a game you didn't own. Never "tested" software before buying it. Never broke an encryption. And never once, ever opened a folder or a file that contained personal information.

    I call shenanigans on your "integrity."
  • avisotin, on 06/22/2008, -0/+7Must be a case of the Mondays!
  • BenBenMan, on 06/22/2008, -2/+9SELECT surname, firstname, salary FROM employee ?
  • maexus, on 06/22/2008, -0/+6I was going to say, what else are we supposed to do with our down time. Sometimes there just isn't anything to do.
  • notBrit, on 06/22/2008, -1/+7@ phlux

    Sure, the article was talking about "snooping," but you were talking about "integrity."

    I find it depressing that your definition of the word is limited to how you handle the financial and classified information of your employers and coworkers. As if the software you "obtain" in your "personal life" isn't breaching the trust of the programmer who wrote it.

    Shenanigans stands. Get off your horse.
  • padraic2112, on 06/22/2008, -5/+11I don't think the 1/2 figure is accurate. Maybe if you count outsourced helpdesk support like the Geek Squad. I'd like to see Cyber-Ark's source data, I think this is a misleading figure.
  • jparkinson, on 06/22/2008, -0/+6A lot... don't you mean.. all.
  • phlux, on 06/22/2008, -4/+10Thats BS.

    I have been in IT for over 15 years. I absolutely have *never* looked at files that I am not supposed to. I have, and demand of my staff, integrity.

    Any snooping in files that one is not supposed to is *unacceptable* and will result in immediate termination.

    The sad thing is that I think this Survey is BS as I know that pretty much all my IT peers, and colleagues actually have integrity. Depressing that integrity isnt a valued virtue.

  • Slackdragon, on 06/22/2008, -1/+7Hey, it was my snoopiness and boredom at work that led me to find some moron was developing a porn site on a shared drive at work. It was so hilarious. Sitting in my cube with a full blown (no pun) porn page up on my terminal screen when I called my supervisor over.

    She freaked out! Started tell me I could get fired for having that on my computer. I said, "Really? Well, look at the URL, and tell me, who's going to get fired for having an entire SITE on the S: drive?"

    She clicked through a few more images in disbelief (or curiosity) before closing my browser and assuring me she would take care of it. The next day, all that had happened was the folders the site was being developed on were locked. I asked her what happened, and she was told "It's being handled."

    So to me that means upper management knew about it and didn't expect anyone to find it. Which would explain why they were so stingy with their server bandwidth as far as letting us Technical Service Reps use the internet to find solutions for problems.


  • sfcaptainrob, on 06/22/2008, -0/+5But then who will snoop the snoopers who are snooping the snoopers??
  • Wormwoods, on 06/22/2008, -2/+7What what?
  • ChiefUCF, on 06/22/2008, -0/+5No, they're not. I never have, and I have admin rights to the entire company. I've got better things to do.
  • theNazz, on 06/22/2008, -0/+5Just wait until you find out that she is featured on some of those pages...
  • JeffD, on 06/22/2008, -0/+4How do you know its not all that interesting if you've never snooped?
  • Slackdragon, on 06/22/2008, -0/+4Oh, God, I hope not... All women are -not- created equal. Let's just say her assets were not physical. She's a very brilliant woman, but not the kind of person you would pay to see naked.
  • rivostevo, on 06/22/2008, -2/+6That's what she said.
  • brbubba, on 06/22/2008, -0/+4It's called American's don't understand statistics anyway so what the hell do they care. Stop watching US news and wake up America.
  • mustang460, on 06/22/2008, -4/+8...in the butt?
  • TheKillDoctor, on 06/22/2008, -1/+5 Releasing false positive spam allows us to know all your dirty secrets too.
  • jparkinson, on 06/22/2008, -0/+4If your end users can install their own applications you're just asking for ***** problems.
  • BaNZ, on 06/22/2008, -1/+5I'm a sysadmin and the only time I check their personal files is when their roaming profile is broken. Last week there was a fit girl which had 10 gig of personal pictures. So I proceed to check if she has got any dodgey files. Just 2 gig of mp3 so I just delete them. No bikini shots ;(
  • kmattso, on 06/22/2008, -1/+5We must fight back against snoopers and install snooper snoopers.
  • webcrumb, on 06/22/2008, -0/+4That went out of fashion along with good food and community spirit.
  • Technopundit, on 06/23/2008, -0/+3Not as tight as it's quacked up to be.
  • inactive, on 06/22/2008, -1/+4Of course! the I.T. people usually have access to a lot of confidential files.
  • xavier2010, on 06/22/2008, -5/+8Let me ask you this, if you are the I.T. personell of a company ITS YOUR JOB TO SNOOP!
  • Leomarth, on 06/22/2008, -2/+5If IT professionals want to snoop around with limited amounts of information, can you imagine what government does with access to many times more information than this?
  • phlux, on 06/22/2008, -2/+4The article was talking about snooping on files that, as an administrator, I have access to.

    I have (had, in previous positions) access to financial information for one of the largest companies in the world. Salaries of its employees, emails that were of classified nature.

    Regardless of how I may choose to obtain software in my personal life - I would never breach the trust of the position I had of authority in such a case.

  • inactive, on 06/22/2008, -0/+2When I used to work as a CSR, I received an email asking me if I wanted to set up a password for my MS Access query, because they feared unauthorized access (the database had all the sales statistic, stock at different stores, etc). I replied that I'd like a password, but seeing as how I was a lowly CSR who was just running queries for fun between calls, and that I was probably the cause of the new password procedure, it might be awkward.

    I never got in trouble for it... (the system was wide open after all) but they blocked my access about 2 seconds after that email...
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