SmallBizResource Blog -- Security

The Upside of Being IT-Less

Posted by Gayle Kesten Thursday, Jun 19, 2008, 04:00 PM ET

I just discovered the bright side of not having your own IT staff.

According to a survey of 300 senior IT pros, one-third of them confessed to snooping on their colleagues -- poking their noses into files containing salary data as well as personal email. Even scarier: IT staff who have left a company can still gain access because privileged passwords aren't changed frequently enough.

"For most people, administrative passwords are a seemingly innocuous tool used by the IT department to update or amend systems. To those 'in the know' they are the keys to the kingdom," said an executive from Cyber-Ark, the Newton, Mass.-based security company that conducted the survey and, I'm sure, would love to tell you about the solutions it sells to counter the problem.

But we -- smallest of small businesses -- don't have IT departments, do we? We're our own IT departments, for better or sometimes worse.

So remember to thank me when you sleep soundly tonight. Save your worries about network threats, botnets, database breaches, unscrupulous co-workers and the like for tomorrow.

What do you think? Do these results surprise/infuriate you? I wonder how many IT workers are seeing red...

Security