Disgruntled IT pros are blowing the whistle on companies with out-of-compliance licenses screamed a headline recently on Networkworld. And while we will not go into the subject of employee job satisfaction, The ITSMguydoes look and discuss the area of Software Asset Management (SAM) and how firms are handling this area.
From discovery to the management reports you need, what is your current state? When was the last time you conducted a software audit? Do you know all the types of software you have purchased as a company, by your employees or that they may have downloaded “free” on their own?
You may be at risk and not even know it. And even if you have a completely satisfied workforce, you may not have addressed the root cause issue (yes a problem management plug here) with your company still at risk from a general audit from a vendor.
With April 15th approaching, is it a tax audit you should be worried about or the costs and potential penalties of a software audit? Is shelfware building up like dust on your VHS tape collection or are you living on the edge with more copies deployed that you can account for?
Article: In a tough economy, disgruntled or fired employees are reporting their companies’ questionable software licensing practices and exposing a culture of widespread software piracy.
Rampant software piracy by IT professionals was clear in a survey of 200 IT professionals on IT Ethics conducted by Network World. While 89% of respondents said it was unethical for an IT employee to make the company fall out of compliance with software license agreements, 70% said they have directly witnessed other IT folks knowingly violating software licenses.
One survey respondent told Network World that IT professionals are often ordered to violate software agreements by managers on the business side of the house. Additionally, 69% of respondents said they’ve directly witnessed their IT professional peers looking the other way when employees use the network to illegally install unlicensed software or share DRM-protected files.
The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) confirms that its caseload of corporate piracy is on the rise. The SIIA says that frustrated IT professionals are increasingly fingering their employers for failing to buy enough copies of the software used on the job.
The SIIA, which litigates software piracy cases, says the number of reports it received about corporations violating their software licensing agreements increased during the second half of 2010. SIIA is now investigating more than 40 complaints per month, up from 30 a year ago.
SIAA gives out anti-piracy rewards to whistleblowers — $127,000 to 24 sources in 2009 and $57,700 to 16 sources in 2010 — who report incidents of corporate end-user software and content piracy that are later verified.
“The reason people report to us is because they are disgruntled,” says Keith Kupferschmid, senior vice president of intellectual property at SIIA. “They may have been fired. They may have not gotten the bonus or raise that they wanted. They end up getting angry and reporting to us.”