The growing threat of rogue employees

Information security has been an increased area of focus for most financial services firms this year, but with a surge in the number of disgruntled employees stealing confidential data, this seems likely to become a bigger issue.

As we've alluded to before bonus expectations seem out-of-kilter with what the banks are putting aside for variable compensation this year, and there are increasing rumours that more redundancies could be on the cards - most recently at BarCap.

This could be a problem, with financial services firms - and recruitment agencies - facing increasing instances data theft by victims of redundancy programmes and employees miffed with bonus payouts.

According to research from law firm EMW, 95 such cases reached the high court this year, compared to 23 in 2008.

"Increasingly, those in commission-based jobs want to hit the ground running with a new employer, and the easiest way of doing this is to come armed with the contacts and clients from your previous company," says Mark Finn, principal at EMW. "If you wanted to do this before, you'd need a van to carry the data out of the office, now it's done in a couple of clicks."

Obviously, in these cases the people concerned have been caught, but increasingly rogue IT staff are also involved in data theft and are better able to cover their tracks.

As the FT points out private banks have been pouring huge sums of money into upgrading their IT security systems on the back of attacks from techies.

"If there is a subject today that keeps a private bank chief executive awake at night, it's not stock exchange volatility but the risk of data theft," said Daniel Bardini of Sungard.

Moreover, as far as IT staff are concerned, it's less about stealing client data and more about lifting computer trading code.

Obviously, there's the high profile case of former Goldman programmer Sergey Aleynikov, but this week former SocGen employee Samarth Agrawal faced a prison sentence of between four and five years for stealing code from the French bank to use at his new employer, Tower Research Capital.

"In the financial sector, because of the threat of cyber terrorism towards banks, IT security professionals are becoming increasingly valuable," adds Paul Winchester, managing director at IT recruiters Greythorn. "Some of the top security workers already work in banks, so the financial sector already has some of the best skills in the business."