Nosy Neighbours Make It To The Office
The perennial employer problem of staff misusing data they have access to remains a constant, but the solution is now in most business manager’s hands - chop off their hands!
A recent Associated Press news report cites the example of a landlord snooping on tenants to discover details of their finances, as well as a woman who accessed her ex-boyfriend’s account after the couple broke up. Both people worked for a Wisconsin energy utility company and took advantage of their wide-ranging access to people’s data to go snooping. Genius!
Seriously, just as computers have made it easier for staff to snoop on information they should not be looking at, so the same technology can be harnessed to beat the snoopers. It’s difficult to tackle the problem head-on (unless you opt for my advice above), especially if staff doing the snooping are authorised to have access to the database concerned, but by introducing behavioural analysis software to the system it is possible to flag up any unusual database activity to the audit team concerned.
This is how it works: By automatically comparing each individual data access against a dynamic baseline of previously learned employee behaviour it’s an easy task to spot staff who are accessing data they shouldn’t, in real time and even catch them in the act. Then, of course, you can decide whether the hands stay or go …
