Great Wall Syndrome
A termed coinged by by Michael Thelander in his article “The Great Wall syndrome [workplace information security]” where he discussed a 2004 survey of Fortune 100 companies by the Ponemon Institute found that insiders were responsible for roughly 70 percent of reported security breaches (Reardon, 2005). BBC News, quoting another survey by data forensics from Ibas, stated that 70 percent of staff surveyed have stolen key information from the workplace, that 72 percent of these offenders had no ethical issues with helping themselves to information that would benefit them in a new job, and that 30 percent of respondents had stolen contact data when they left an employer (2004). The discussion focuses on the the focus of IT security being primarily on the perimeter, whereas the majority of security breaches occur from within.
Citation: Michael Thelander. ”
The Great Wall Syndrome,” IT Professional, vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 25-30, September/October, 2005.