One of three professionals in the field of information technology misuse administrative passwords in order to get to confidential information such as salaries of colleagues, personal e-mails or records of secret meetings.
This was seen in a study led by the U.S. company for information security Cyber-Ark, cited by Reuters.
The company examined 300 senior IT professionals and found that one third of them poke their nose in secret proceedings, while 47 percent say that they get to information that is out of their powers.
"All you need is access to the right passwords or privileged accounts and you are already initiated into everything that happens in your company".
To most people administrative passwords seem an innocuous tool used by IT department to correct or update the system.
For those cognizant of them, however, it is the key for the kingdom", said the director of Cyber-Ark UK Mark Fullbrook.
These passwords are changed very rarely - only 30 percent of them are changed once a 3 months, and 9 percent are changed.
This means that people who have already resigned could continue logging into the server of their former company and cause havocs.
It was also mentioned in the study that 7 of 10 companies rely on archaic and uncertain methods of exchange of important information. 35 percent choose for this purpose email, equal percentage prefer courier, while 4 percent still stake on the system of Postal Services.
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