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Recession Pushes More Workers To Steal Data
An anonymous reader writes to share the findings of a recent transatlantic survey which suggests that the recession is pushing workers to be a little bit more accommodating when it comes to sharing, viewing, or stealing sensitive information from the company they work(ed) for. "Pilfering data has become endemic in our culture as 85% of people admit they know it's illegal to download corporate information from their employer but almost half couldn't stop themselves taking it with them with the majority admitting it could be useful in the future! [...] The survey entitled 'the global recession and its effect on work ethics,' carried out for a second year by Cyber-Ark – found that almost half of the respondents 48% admit that if they were fired tomorrow they would take company information with them and 39% of people would download company/competitive information if they got wind that their job was at risk. Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer."
Unless I make enough money to retire debt free, no deal.
Most people will get caught and lose their jobs for tiny amounts of money and poor future job prospects
Cyber-Ark just happens to have a product that helps prevent this.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Speaking of professional ethics, who wants to bet that a survey sponsored by Cyber-Ark uses leading questions to produce results which bolster their business?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
"Additionally a quarter of workers said that the recession has meant that they feel less loyal towards their employer."
I'd be happy to show some loyalty to my employer if they would but return the favor. Instead I'm treated as a simple expense on the accountant's balance sheets; one that's easily gotten rid of. The people who make the decisions are much too far removed from the people who make the product. Hell, I feel more loyalty to my favorite baseball team than I do to the corporation I work for.
Indeed. When execs are getting $10 mil bonus packages for burning a company to the ground, when the upper echelons are gutting pension plans by reneging on past promises and contracts and then turn around and pocket the savings for themselves, it should come as no surprise in the least that those of us further down the corporate ladder are taking a similarly opportunistic approach.
Social mammals tend to emulate the alpha individuals of their groups. The alphas, by dint of successfully establishing themselves as alphas, are viewed as successful -- "well, they're doing something right for themselves, guess it'd be smart for me to do the same." When sociopaths lead our companies, the employees themselves will, generally speaking, start behaving more sociopathically. It's basic survival.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You can't steal music (except by stuffing CDs down your pants at the store) because the data is published (not to mention broadcast). Confidential information, on the other hand, can be "stolen" because, while you're still merely copying the data, you're stealing the secret.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The survey asked banksters and Wall Street fraud artists: FTFA:
We already know that Wall Street and Canary Wharf are full of crooks. I suspect that among that bunch, the 41% is low - the other 59% probably lied.
Looking at your Slashdot name, that post takes on a bit of an ominous tone. Is "gave my notice" some kind of euphemism?
I'm sure that some people do try to profit from illicitly obtained information from their past employers; I've heard a few stories here and there about people getting busted. But there is simply no way that 50% of everyone in the workforce is doing this for a few simple reasons:
1. Risk - I think everyone is aware that the damage to your career and professional reputation would be catastrophic if you were caught, not to mention the legal ramifications.
2. Ethics - Yes, people do have them. Maybe not everyone is the pinnacle of ethical behavior, but that doesn't mean every other person you see at the office is just waiting to mug you and steal your wallet in the parking lot.
3. Nothing to steal - The majority of employees just don't have access to proprietary information that is actually of value outside the company. Sure, I could tell a future employer about my company's HR policies or give them an org chart. That might be very slightly useful, but certainly isn't going to get me hired or land me millions. I could also give them all of the company's internally developed code, but it would be of little use without all of the institutional knowledge, expertise and essentially the entire original company to go along with it.
4. Employers are liable as well - Take the case of the people who tried to sell some of Coke's trade secrets to Pepsi. They were refused, and Pepsi informed the police. They know that they would be liable for the illegal behavior as well, and want no part of it. Now not every employer operates above board, but it's a risky game to try to sell information to someone who may not even want to buy it.
So in summary: bullshit.
"Causality error" in that they've mistaken the (observed) effect as a "cause". The fact is, the "global recession" has merely revealed a decline in workers' "ethics" that was already there and which had been forming for at least the past several decades. Despite what the talking heads (in both media and the government) are saying, this "economic downturn" is nowhere near as bad as the "Great Depression"; this according to the many "oldsters" I am in frequent conversation with -- my own parents included -- who actually lived through the period rather than merely learning about it from the history books -- and their recollections do not include such a widespread deterioration in the "morals" (their word -- read "ethics") of the population (and yes there were notable exceptions, some accounts of which are a little scary even to modern ears, but by and large people -- at least in this part of the country -- still left their doors unlocked at night; I triple-locked my doors almost religiously during even the much lauded "economic boom time" of just a few years ago!!) Poverty does not cause crime any more than crime causes poverty (including but not by any means limited to the "victims" of Mr. Madoff -- their poverty was caused by a mixture of greed and stupidity.)
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To answer that question, we should understand the theft in the total context of labor ethics. The current economic recession differs from the previous recession (during the dotcom bust) in 2 important ways. One difference is that it was caused by a failure of the banking system, which had placed financial bets on bad mortgages.
A second difference is that the "normal" lag between declining gross-domestic product (GDP) and rising unemployment was very short. In all previous recessions, the lag was at least 6 months. During this recession, the lag was much shorter. Once the typical employer saw declining orders for products or services, he immediately fired workers. This high-speed termination of workers was once the hallmark of the Silicon-Valley employer's mentality but has now spread to the rest of the nation.
The national unemployment rate exceeds 10 percent. In some states, the rate exceeds 12%.
By contrast, Japanese companies (for cultural reasons) and European companies (for both cultural reasons and legal reasons) make every effort to avoid firing workers during an economic recession. Although Americans once laughed at Europeans for favoring kinder, gentler labor policies that "hindered" economic growth, the Europeans now have the last laugh: the unemployment rate in America now exceeds the rate in several European countries.
The Americans favor a Darwinian system of employment: survival of the fittest. If you are "weak" and if you do not have the right political connections (e. g., being the beer-drinking buddy of the department head), then you will be fired. If you lose your home, your family, and commit suicide, then the Darwinian system gives only 1 reply: "Too bad, loser!"
In this context, we should not judge the morality of stealing sensitive data from your previous employer. If he fired you in response to the recession, then you should do whatever you need to do to survive. You should live by Darwinian rules. You do whatever you need to do and whenever you need to do "it".
Why would anyone want to risk hiring someone who demonstrates that they're crooked?
I won't even name my previous employer until the NDA has expired. As for passwords, etc., I do my best to forget them the minute I walk out, after handing them over. I don't even want to be tempted, and it's a small world. It's nice to be called back a year later because they know that, no matter whether you left on good or bad terms, you can still be trusted.
"If you're going to steal for me, what's to stop you from stealing from me?"
"If you're going to lie for me, what's to stop you from lying to me?"
"If you're going to screw someone else over, why should I trust you?"
"Would you do it for a million bucks? Yes? How about a dollar? What do you mean, 'What kind of a person do you think I am?' We already established that with your first answer!"
Trust is easy to lose - and once gone, you can end up like Kurt Greenbaum the "social media director" who is now a pariah because he violated people's trust by revealing a posters' identity and then gloating about it in his column. Don't leave mad - just leave. Life is too short.
Yea, what happened to the good old days when they would find out they let you go by the locks being changed on your office door or not being able to log in, or worse the security guard has a box of your stuff at the front desk?
Personally, I do cut off all network access, email accounts, and so on with my own employees before informing them to hit the road, even if they are leaving under good terms. Fortunately, I have not had to fire many, because I generally don't treat them like shit and they don't treat me like shit. It really is an innovate corporate policy in this day and age.
Living in Chile
When push comes to shove survival of the fittest rules all. When it comes down to the wire of being able to support yourself and provide for your family, morality is far less a consideration than providing is. Simply put, like it or not, morality is in the eye of the beholder and nature doesn't give a rat's ass how you FEEL about anything.
Company's that don't treat their employees like valued assets will discover it is the very foundation of their business which will turn on them when they need them most. The old-boys-club (or woman's club nowadays) can fall to ruin under the pressure of a survivalist-economy just as quickly as they can layoff a $30k worker in HR rather than cut $100k+ executive pay or bonuses by 1% in order to help keep that worker and their company strong.
No loyalty or sense of community = no loyalty or care of the communities well being.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
me too - in fact, the artificial non-posting of salaries, bonus, and other information leads to distortions in the marketplace.
Which, in other words means that dotgain hates capitalism ... (grin)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
No, it doesn't. I was called in to do some consulting for a few months at one place, and one of the sales reps approached me about making an app for him; he had started up a business, had his customer lists, prices, etc., and was skimming customers for his new business while still employed at his current location.
Even if he had already quit, it's still illegal. Customer and price lists are the employers' proprietary information.
I informed the ownership, and gave testimony during discovery with lawyers for both sides present. If I hadn't informed them, there would have been questions asked about what I knew and when, since I had access to everything (a lot more than the dickhead did). I don't need the grief, and neither should you. Act like a professional.
Moral of the story - even a dog knows better than to bite the hand that feeds it.
Depending on how you ask the question, you'll get a different answer. Sensitive data range from a simple copy of the internal phone list, to a valuable dump of the client database. For programmers, I bet 95% would keep copies of minor programs they wrote believing they will be of use for them at a later job. Created on company time and therefore company owned perhaps, but that automatically mean any harm has been done.
The original article was lots of hype and scare tactics. What were they trying to sell again?
1. Are you going to pay them back the money they gave you in exchange for creating it?
2. Are you that poor a developer that a year later you can't think of a better way to implement something, that doesn't involve misappropriated the code that belongs to them, because they PAID for it?
3. Are you that poor a developer that you're basically a one-trick pony, and can't work on anything other than that one product?
4. Do you have the guts to put your name on it here and now?
Your mother would be ashamed of you.
You call bullshit, but this survey is about how desperate and scared people are.
1. Risk - In the industry I work in, even before the Recession, theft of data has always been a huge issue. No, theft of data is no big deal at your local 7-11, but at businesses with regular customers, it could be a simple matter for a salesrep to snatch it's customer roll and sneak off, start their own company, and take these customers with them. the survey talked to 600 people in Canary Wharf London and Wall Street New York. That happens there all the time too. Risk is not the same across all industries, and we aren't talking about the coke formula, we are talking about orders, customers, item lists, stuff more basic than a super secret soft drink formula.
2. Canary Wharf, Wall Street... nuff said about ethics there. In general, I disagree in that, particularly in the states, that a majority of people are that loyal to their employer. I'm loyal to my employer because they pay me well, and because if I did come up with an idea to steal data, I'd completely botch it since I'm horrible at intrigue, deceit, lying, and anything else you'd need to pull off illicit behavior. However, I hold no huge ideal that I should be loyal to them just because it's the right thing to do. They haven't exactly been 100% loyal to me. And if there is even a sniff that I might be laid off, I'm not thinking of my company, I'm thinking about me and where my next mortgage payment is coming from. Layoffs are still rampant in the US, and layoffs do NOT garner loyalty. My company has had layoffs.
3. nothing to steal - your answer thinks of only one industry, software. I work in software and software is protected by patents and copyright in the states, so it's hard to steal because lawyers catch you and sue you. However, as I've stated, in my industry, our customers worry about data security all the time. Customer roles, item lists, pricing, all these things give you a competitive advantage if you can find out what they are. Pricing in business to business transactions is all over the place, it's not one price for all like in retail. Find out what you are selling to which customers for what prices, then find a way to beat those prices and quietly steal those customers away... and you have a disaster. You could start investigating who is stealing them, but by the time you find out you've lost a lot of business and it's not economically beneficial to try to sue the guy for damages in general. You might get something back but you don't want to do that at all, because lawyer fees are a pain and the return on investment isn't like it is at large software or soft drink companies. You can't patent a price list.
4. Employers are liable as well - see legal liability under #3. Also, a lot of these salesreps just go off and found their own companies and take their customers with them, so the company and person taking the liability are one and the same, meaning no more additional liability than before, and the same amount of risk. What's even worse is that if you lay a salesrep off, you can't steal his brain. If he just remembers this information in his head, it's not illegal. You just have to hope to provide better value or try to scare them with a noncompete clause, which these days can be broken easily.
The US is at 10% unemployment, and businesses to this day do whatever they can to maintain large executive bonuses while staying in the black, and while Wall Street continues to suck the money from them. Money is trickling up, not down, and people feel cheated out of jobs and homes. If they feel cheated, you damn well better believe the employees will cheat back if they think they can get away with it. The employers who did not do everything they could possibly think of to be loyal to their employees will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Exactly. For any capitalist system to function properly, all market participants must have full and equal access to all information.
This includes labor.
No, this isn't Karl Marx's ideas - this is Adam Smith, the inventor of Capitalism.
Downmodding me won't change the fact that free and widely distributed information makes the market function better, as does all inputs, both good (GDP) and bad (pollution, etc, which aren't measured in our system).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Better an afternoon in discovery where everyone on both sides is nice and polite, than a day or two in court, having one side trying to discredit you, or worse, trying to shift at least a part of the blame to you. It's the same as donating blood or doing jury duty - it's all part and parcel of doing your share to make sure the system is a bit fairer and a bit nicer.
1. What ever happened to "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem"?
2. If you were the one being betrayed, wouldn't you hope that not everyone would "look the other way"? If a woman's being raped, are you just going to "look the other way" because the guy might have a gun, or he might come after you while awaiting trial? this is one time when "slippery slope" does apply.
3. What sort of example is that to set for your kids? How will it affect how they can trust your advice, if they know your ethics are so questionable? Won't they justifiably call you a hypocrite if you do the "Do as I say, not as I do" thing?
4. Why would I worry about the ex-employee? He's a proven dishonest scum-bucket not worthy of trust. Anyone who would trust him over me has bigger problems. Besides, what's he going to do?
5. It's the right thing to do.
Some of us like to work for reasons beyond simple money.
Perhaps you made the wrong job choice, my sympathies.
It's never to late to find something you like to do (accepting financial reality.)
Who knows: If you like it you might even be good at it?
Or perhaps you are just fucking lazy.
I would go stir crazy without something useful to do.
If I were independently wealthy I would have to construct a job like activity to keep me busy. Perhaps 'making a small fortune in auto racing'? Bet I would work _more and harder_ doing that.
That said I prefer to spend my time 'solving technical puzzles/problems, usually with computers', not playing office politics with a bunch of morons.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'