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Adversaries Are Eyeing Your IT Staff. Why Aren't You?

Sep 3, 2019 | 09:00 GMT

If members of the information technology department are recruited or volunteer to be an espionage agent, they can cause serious damage to their company.

Information technology personnel often have access to communications, applications and data storage that contains a company’s most valuable proprietary information and trade secrets.

(Shutterstock/Gorodenkoff)

Highlights

  • Information technology (IT) personnel often have access to communications, applications and data storage that contains a company's most valuable proprietary information and trade secrets.
  • As a result, espionage actors often consider disgruntled and underpaid IT employees as prime targets for human intelligence recruitment.
  • To mitigate this risk, companies should take measures to ensure their IT staffers are happy, well-respected and fairly compensated for their work.
  • Because of their access to highly coveted data, they should also be subjected to the same security protocols as the rest of the staff.

Since the advent of encrypted electronic communications, those who operate these communication systems at intelligence, military and foreign affairs agencies have naturally been a prime target of espionage operations. These communicators, or who the U.S. State Department calls "information management specialists," often have access to some of the most sought-after information like encryption keys that could be catastrophic in the wrong hands. Despite this, however, they've historically been treated as second-class citizens next to their affluent, Ivy League-educated colleagues who are conducting the actual diplomacy or intelligence operations. But while they may be overlooked by their own organization, they've long been placed in the crosshairs of hostile intelligence services. This dangerous oxymoron -- where some of the most underpaid, overworked employees are the ones with the most power to implode an organization -- continues to play out in today's business world. But instead of information specialists, they're called information technology specialists....

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