“Employees who are disgruntled or enticed to steal by outside criminal organizations are compromising financial companies’ systems with little sophistication and no clear-cut behavioral profile, according to a report from the U.S. Secret Service and the Carnegie Mellon CERT/CC.

“The joint effort examined 23 incidents by 26 insiders in the banking and finance sector between 1996 and 2002. Of the 23 incidents, it found 15 involved fraud, four the theft of intellectual property and four sabotage.

“The report concluded, ‘Insiders pose a substantial threat by virtue of their knowledge of and access to their employers’ systems and/or databases, and their ability to bypass existing physical and electronic security measures through legitimate means.’

“Security experts from the financial sector aren’t surprised by the findings.

“‘Rewind a century, before the Internet. You had bank robbers and insiders pilfering money, but there were good accounting controls to deal with it,’ said Guillermo Kopp, vice president of financial services strategies for Needham, Mass.-based research and consulting firm TowerGroup. ‘Fast forward to the present, where you have a much more automated and complicated banking process. The report is saying half of insider attacks were from clerks, administrators and others who aren’t technologically sophisticated; some of whom are lured by organized crime. That shows serious lapses in control. Perhaps most telling is that it’s the customers who discover problems.’”