More than a third of firms believe competitors have their IP

08/07/2010

More than one-third of companies believe their intellectual property (IP) is in the hands of a competitor, a new survey has revealed.

When questioned on who was responsible for any breaches of information security, 37 per cent of firms said they thought ex-employees were to blame, while 28 per cent said it could have been human error, according to the Trust Security and Passwords survey by Cyber-Ark.

The loss of mobile devices, which could lead to data protection problems, or hackers were cited as the reason by ten per cent of those polled by Cyber-Ark.

More than 40 per cent of the companies admitted they are only reliant on administrator passwords to protect their firm's data and information security.

Adam Bosnian, vice-president of Cyber-Ark, said organisations were obliged to protect sensitive information and IP.

"Failing to do so, in our opinion, makes the company as bad as those who are abusing their privileged positions. You might as well sell the information to the highest bidder yourself - at least you’ll have some control over who’s got it."

Recently, a report by security vendor SecureWorks revealed that one in ten PCs in the UK are compromised by hackers.

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