A SURVEY OF THE OBVIOUS came to a conclusion that an office worker should take as read: those shadowy types in the IT department are probably reading your mail.
According to insecurity firm Cyber-Ark's research, a third of IT professionals enjoy snooping around their firm's IT systems, reading personal emails and trawling through salary details and suchlike.

What the researchers found even more worrying is the fact that a third of the 200 techies they questioned at last month's Infosec Exhibition in London said they'd been able to access a former employer's network after their contact had terminated.

Corporate passwords are rarely changed and security seems of little concern to many organisations that seem to bumble along unwary, the findings suggest. Passwords are left lying around on Post-It notes in IT departments and often a single password is all that is needed to expose the most critical of data.

Cyber-Ark boatswain, Calum Macleod, was surprised to see how rife snooping is in the workplace.

"It is surprising," he said, "to find out how rife snooping is in the workplace.

"Gone are the days," he said, "when you had to break into the filing cabinet in the personnel department to get at vital and highly confidential information.

"Now all you need is the administrative password and you can snoop around most places, and it appears that is exactly what's happening."

Cyber-Ark, funnily enough, punts itself as a password protection expert.