Egress Study Reveals Perils of Insider Data Breaches
Egress recently released the results of its second global insider data breach survey. As befits the name, this study focuses on the causes, frequency, and implications of internal security breach incidents. It reached more than 500 IT leaders and 5,000 employees across the world.
Egress offers email security and data encryption to identify cybersecurity risk behaviors. Also, it uses contextual machine learning to inspect content and analyze risk in real-time; this helps to mitigate misdirected emails and spear-phishing attacks. According to its website, Egress’ solution calculates the risk level of every sent email so it can provide recommendations for protecting sensitive data.
According to the Egress study, 97 percent of IT leaders express worry over insider data breaches. 78 percent think their employees have already put their data at risk accidentally over the past year. Meanwhile, 75 percent think the employees put the data at risk intentionally. Also, around 41 percent of the respondents said that the financial damage of an insider threat poses the biggest risk.
When asked, only half of IT leaders said they use anti-virus software to combat phishing attacks. Furthermore, less than half use email encryption or provide secure collaboration tools.
Egress CEO Tony Pepper offered his thoughts on the findings of the study. “While they acknowledge the sustained risk of insider data breaches, bizarrely IT leaders have not adopted new strategies or technologies to mitigate the risk. Effectively, they are adopting a risk posture in which at least one-third of employees putting data at risk is deemed acceptable.”
“The severe penalties for data breaches mean IT leaders must action better risk management strategies, using advanced tools to prevent insider data breaches. They also need better visibility of risk vectors; relying on employees to report incidents is not an acceptable data protection strategy.”
Learn more about Egress here.
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