Loyalties Die Hard

Here are some frighteningbut anonymouswords from a source familiar with security breaches at a number of Fortune 500 companies

By Malcolm Wheatley

September 01, 2003 — CSO — "The employees who are left behind are as much of an issue as the employee who was terminated," he says. Former coworkers, out of a misplaced sense of loyalty, may reconnect the terminated employee with the network. Sometimes that involves allowing him to recover "personal" information from his workstation. Or a former coworker might provide a terminated individual with an archive of his e-mail, allowing him to stay in touch with former customers. In other cases, individuals had their e-mail accounts re-enabled or were granted renewed VPN access. "It does happenit's not fiction," he says, "and it's surprisingly difficult to identify when it has happened, and who did it."

Read more about identity & access in CSOonline's Identity & Access section.

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