IT Security's Next Big Threat: Young People

First, it was viruses. Then it was financially motivated hackers, followed by insider threats. And the next big danger? People who can't remember the Bee Gees. During the past two weeks, IT security managers have been getting a new warning that turns the old '60s hippie slogan -- "Never trust anyone over 30" -- upside down. The new message: Twenty-somethings are putting the corporate network at risk.

Since Nov. 5, three separate studies -- from Accenture, Intel, and ISACA, a major IT users group -- have indicted the youngest generation of employees as one of the enterprise's newest and most serious security risks. People under the age of 28 -- sometimes called Generation Y and sometimes called Millenials, depending on how you define the category -- are engaging in online behavior that could expose their organizations to data leakage and information theft, the studies say.

The Accenture study, published two weeks ago, queried more than 400 students and employees ranging from age 14 to age 27. It found that more than half (60 percent) of young people "are either unaware of their companies' IT policies or are not inclined to follow them."