Conor Flynn, of Dublin-based firm RITS, told the Sunday Tribune that less ethical motives behind new staff recruitment are becoming a factor in the IT industry.

"We are in an era of full employment and there are shortages of IT workers in what is a country with a very small gene pool of talent compared to other countries, " said Flynn.

"It's happened now on a number of occasions where IT workers are being recruited with the explicit intent of gaining access to confidential information and to gain a competitive advantage. There is a pretty high level of ignorance in companies about the information an IT employee can actually access, " he said.

Not many companies traditionally pay much attention to their IT units as they are not a revenue generating part of their business but they are the ones with the socalled "keys to the kingdom", and regularly have full access to privileged information.

Flynn was reacting to an American survey carried out by Cyber-Ark which said that one in three IT workers admitted to snooping through confidential emails and private information through administrator passwords, which are often left blank.

He said that research was reflective of the Irish situation but a spokesperson for employers group, IBEC, said IT security was not a major issue in Ireland and that by and large regulations in the area are complied with.

However Flynn believes that it is the smaller Irish companies who outsource their IT that are the most vulnerable to IT espionage.

"They might have a different IT employee every week with no password-aging controls. It is a major problem across the board and its something there needs to b e more education about, " he concluded.

Last week in the US, computer manufacturer Dell, called for an investigation into reports from Fortune magazine that their main rival, Hewlett Packard, has been spying on them.