Caption: Ken Theis, director, Michigan's Department of Information Technology

When Terry Childs, a network engineer for the city and county of San Francisco, locked co-workers out of the city's computer network in July 2008 and refused to hand over access codes - even to the police - it took a jail-side visit from Mayor Gavin Newsom before the rogue IT worker surrendered the password.

Childs' actions caused a sensation in the IT community. In particular, the blogosphere lit up with comments on the ramifications of San Francisco's network administrator-turned-malcontent hacker. Seattle Chief Technology Officer Bill Schrier blogged that Childs "apparently had a disdain for other administrators, staff and management in the [IT] department." InfoWorld's Senior Contributing Editor Paul Venezia blogged that Childs was "a disgruntled network admin."

But some comments revealed that Childs had supporters. "I sympathize with Mr. Childs' would-be goal of protecting the network," wrote one person in response to a July 28, 2008, blog post by Eric Knorr, another InfoWorld editor. "I got to tell you I don't think Terry meant to do anything malicious at all," wrote another. And still another stated that San Francisco was "making a scapegoat out of Terry Childs" because the city "dropped the ball" by not securing the passwords sooner rather than later.

Childs' motives may be debatable, but the threat posed by insider sabotage definitely isn't. In 2007, the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) released a report, Insider Security Threats: State CIOs Take Action Now! that suggested public scrutiny of government employees may reduce aggressive oversight and compliance regarding insider threats. The report cautioned CIOs about IT experts within state IT departments who have a hacker mentality. "This person is perhaps the most dangerous of all due to his or her expertise and resulting ability to exact a significant amount of damage which could garner unfavorable headlines," the report said. Although the NASCIO paper doesn't detail the underlying causes, it does show insider attacks are rising rapidly.

These findings mirror a 2006 survey conducted by the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a federally funded research and development center for Internet security expertise, which found that 68 percent of cyber-attacks originated from within an organization.

Stress could be one factor behind the rise in internal attacks. In October 2008, Robert Half Technology surveyed IT organizations and found workers are not only accomplishing more with fewer resources these days, but the cutbacks are taking a toll. Thirty-six percent of CIOs interviewed said bigger workloads are the greatest source of stress for their teams. Twenty-two percent cited the pace of new technology as the biggest stressor, followed by office politics at 18 percent.

Workloads are not a new problem in the public sector. Government IT departments have been under pressure to maintain the status quo or cut back for some time and the bad economy doesn't help. Data from the 2008 Public CIO Annual Reader Survey found that 68 percent of respondents saw either no change or a decrease in staffing levels, and 58 percent saw no change or a decreased budget.

In October, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported that at least 39 states faced budget shortfalls, while half of the states had already cut spending for fiscal 2009. With IT viewed as a major cost in government, CIOs and their workers - in virtually all government sectors - should expect to see further pressure to curtail IT budgets, along with a rise in worker-related stress.

We Must Balance Our Budget
If rising workloads and shrinking budgets contribute to stress, then San Francisco has had plenty of it. "I think we're on our eighth consecutive year of budget shortfall," said Chris Vein, CIO of San Francisco. "And San Francisco is a jurisdiction like many where we have to balance our budget.