June 24, 2009    

What’s the point of a password if you tell people?

by Alan Harten

According to a new survey from SecurEnvoy almost 75% of UK employees have admitted that they have told at least two other colleagues their corporate passwords.

The report suggests that passwords may not be as safe as thought, since employees give out their passwords so colleagues can access information while they are out of the office.

Co-founder of SecurEnvoy, Steve Watts, stated that while workers are trusting of their colleagues, it may not be a great idea to share passwords so easily since it can compromise one’s entire work life.

Watts suggested that password sharing be kept to a minimum.

He went on to say that it is important to be cautious, as in the current economic climate disgruntled workers are looking to access information they should not and the threat of short term consultants accessing high profile data is an especially high threat.

Other security concerns have been raised by SecurEnvoy as well, such as tube strikes which can send the trading market into disarray, and there is no clear definition of who may be accessing a company network due to the rise of remote workers.

The main concern with remote access entry into a company network is that it is hard to measure the security of applications when they are not under the control of normal IT infrastructure.

One prime example is the widespread use of Outlook Web Access which can introduce vulnerabilities because of its use of Internet Information Services.

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