Don’t give your PIN to the cleaning lady

In terms of data security I was interested (well, sort of) to read that temporary staff, cleaners, salesmen and security guards are perceived as the least trustworthy members of staff.

Well, this is according to a survey that came past my desk this week. What is perhaps surprising is that the board of directors (10%) and PR and marketing personnel (10%) were then closely ranked as the next in line as the groups of people who you would trust the least within your organisation.

The survey was conducted amongst 200 office workers mainly consisting of IT personnel who unsurprisingly, felt that they were the most trustworthy groups of people within an organisation! However, this opinion was soon shattered as one in three then went onto admit that they abuse their IT privileges by using their administrative passwords to access all kinds of information by snooping around through the company systems, often peeking at confidential data such as your private files, wage data, personal emails and HR background.

Either way, I’m not sure of the value of these surveys, I don’t let passing salesmen see my bank details and I rarely mention my PIN number to our cleaning lady. Oh well, as they say in PR, “If there’s really no news – do a survey.”