Companies risk cyber attacks from redundancies handled insensitively

09:47 20th April 2009

Companies could increase the risk of falling victim to cyber attacks from former employees if redundancies are carried out in an insensitive way, according to one organisation.

Information security event Infosecurity Europe said that many employees have advanced computer training skills and have the ability to do real damage to a business if a redundancy is handled in an insensitive way.

Tamar Beck, group event director at Infosecurity Europe, said that data corruption and attacking corporate servers are among the potential risks faced by corporations.

Ms Beck said: "If they (workers) lose their jobs and they are highly skilled and they aren't treated correctly by their company then they have the skills to do a lot of damage."

She added that servers can take weeks to repair, while the issue also highlights the importance of maintaining data integrity as tampering could otherwise occur without a business realising.

Despite the recession, a study from ReThink Recruitment, an IT staffing company, found that nearly 35 per cent of IT directors are planning to recruit over the next 12 months.