Layoffs can make companies vulnerable to data theft

Experts say prevention can be as simple as checking e-mail logs

When a laid-off employee walks out the door, critical company information may already be gone. The soon-to-be ex-worker may have e-mailed valuable data to a personal Web address — and intends to deliver that information to a company rival.

As the recession’s depth and duration confounds forecasters, businesses are laying off experienced employees whose jobs gave them broad access to company intelligence: customer lists, financial information, maybe even the engineering drawings for the company’s next new gadget.

George Wade, director of computer forensics at the accounting and consulting firm Sobel & Co. in Livingston, said it is difficult, but not impossible, for companies to defend themselves against data leakage. Key steps include keeping a good inventory of essential data, knowing where it’s stored and who has access to it, and staying alert for unusual data traffic.

“When you fire people, you don’t just lose that person, you lose the information they take with them,” said Wade, who before joining Sobel a year ago spent 20 years as regional security manager at Lucent Technologies’ corporate security department in the Murray Hill section of New Providence.

Technology exists to safeguard data, but many companies can’t afford to invest the money right now, Wade said. So he advises companies to start with the tools already at hand — and monitoring the flow of e-mail traffic is a key first step to defend the company data.

“Most companies have e-mail logs they can look at to see who is sending information, and where they’re sending it,” Wade said. “It can be as simple as looking at the frequency of messages, destination, the size of file attachments. An employee who normally only sent small text messages may suddenly start sending large attachments to a Yahoo or Google.

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Source: njbiz.com
By: Beth Fitzgerald