IT staff ethics slip

Half of IT employees would use their access rights at work to hunt for information that could prove useful if they were fired from the company, a survey by security vendor Cyber-Ark has revealed, reports Computing.co.uk.

Rumours that job cuts were looming, meanwhile, would send 46% of workers to look for a redundancy list within the company network.

Adam Bosnian, VP of products, strategy and sales at Cyber-Ark, warned that firms must protect sensitive information carefully.

A travel industry group has called on the US government to halt its use of new machinery that remotely reads government-issued identification cards at border crossings until the safety of the new system can be better understood, says The Register.

Monday's call by the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) follows similar requests by a chorus of civil liberties and computer researchers. They warn that use of the new long-range radio frequency identification (RFID) scanners could jeopardise the privacy and security of people who pass through US borders.

"ACTE is concerned that unauthorised individuals could either resort to electronic eavesdropping at the border or use similar devices that could extract data from RFID chips at other locations," the group's executive director said in a statement. She asked for the system to be halted pending a comprehensive security review.

The UK government is being urged to bring in rules banning a new anti-social behaviour device, which emits a high-pitched noise, reports The BBC.

The Mosquito Mark 4 is designed to ensure areas like car parks are clear of potential troublemakers.

The original Mosquito can be heard only by the under 25s, but the latest version is audible to older adults as well.

In what appears to be a first, Apple is recommending that Mac users install anti-virus software, says CNet.

But don't read this as an admission that the Mac operating system is suddenly insecure. It's more a recognition that Mac users are vulnerable to Web application exploits, which have replaced operating system vulnerabilities as the bigger threat to computer users.

Apple quietly signalled its shift with an item titled "Mac OS: Anti-virus utilities" posted on its Support Web site on 21 November: "Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple anti-virus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult."