Business owners who are forced to make staff redundancies should take steps to protect themselves against virtual attack from ex-employees.
According to a survey by Cyber-Ark, 88% of staff who have access to IT systems and company passwords would steal valuable and useful company data, including the managing director's passwords, customer databases and financial reports.
The research found that one-third of that 88% would even take a list of privileged passwords to access the IT system, potentially giving them access to all the other sensitive and valuable documents and information such as financial reports, accounts, salaries and other privileged and highly sensitive information.
Businesses worried about the possible implications of laying off staff with such knowledge should put measures in place to safeguard vital data before making redundancies and should ensure all sensitive passwords are changed with immediate effect once the process has been completed.
"Most company directors are blissfully unaware of the administrative or privileged passwords that their IT guys have access to which allows them to see everything that is going on within the company," said Udi Mokady, co-founder and chief executive of Cyber-Ark.
"Our advice is secure the most privileged data, and routinely change and manage them, so that if an employee's contract is terminated, whether sacked or made redundant, they can't maliciously play havoc inside the network or vindictively steal data for competitive or financial gain."
The research also suggested that a third of companies believed data was regularly leaked out of their company and into the hands of competitors, usually through mobile devices such as USB sticks, iPods, Blackberrys, laptops or email.
A quarter of firms admitted they had suffered from internal sabotage and instances of IT security fraud while one-third of the IT staff polled admitted looking at highly confidential material on the IT system using administrative passwords.
