Here’s a data point to consider amid the tech sector’s mounting job cuts. According to a new study by the Ponemon Institute, many employees leaving their jobs aren’t above adding a little something to their separation packages: confidential corporate data. More than half of the 945 workers Ponemon surveyed–59 percent–who lost or left a job last year admitted to stealing confidential company data. The most commonly stolen pieces of information: customer contact lists that could be leveraged at a new job. The types of employees most likely to steal: those with a dim view of their former employers. “I’m not sure that malicious intent and future employment are mutually exclusive,” Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, told eWeek. “Clearly the responses show that obtaining future employment was a significant motivating factor, but when we see a high percentage of individuals who took information knowing full well they were acting in violation of company policy, that hints strongly at the presence of malice.”
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size. 11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Here’s a data point to consider amid the tech sector’s mounting job cuts. According to a new study by the Ponemon Institute, many employees leaving their jobs aren’t above adding a little something to their separation packages: confidential corporate data. More than half of the 945 workers Ponemon surveyed–59 percent–who lost or left a job last year admitted to stealing confidential company data. The most commonly stolen pieces of information: customer contact lists that could be leveraged at a new job. The types of employees most likely to steal: those with a dim view of their former employers. “I’m not sure that malicious intent and future employment are mutually exclusive,” Larry Ponemon, chairman of the Ponemon Institute, told eWeek. “Clearly the responses show that obtaining future employment was a significant motivating factor, but when we see a high percentage of individuals who took information knowing full well they were acting in violation of company policy, that hints strongly at the presence of malice.”
