Web Security News

Companies lax in ending IT access for ex-employees

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

In spite of high profile examples of terminated employees using their IT access to steal from or sabotage their former employers, a new survey finds that more than one-third of companies take a week or longer to be "completely certain" that ex-workers no longer can access company systems.

Courion Corporation said its survey results revealed that 93 percent of organizations are confident that terminated employees pose no risk to their network security, even though many have limited or no knowledge of the systems to which their active and terminated employees have access.

Courion said companies show "unwarranted confidence" that their systems are secure from former employees gaining access through "zombie accounts."

The survey of 243 business managers from large enterprises with at least 10,000 employees also found that 30 percent of companies still manually provision user accounts, which Courion said increases the likelihood of human error or delays when de-provisioning departing workers.

This survey dovetails with another recent survey regarding the insider threat that shows an apparent lack of awareness on the part of companies about the severity of the threat from current and former employees.

A survey by Cyber-Ark found that 74 percent of IT administrators and staff in the U.S. and UK said they could get around security controls intended to prevent access to sensitive internal information.