Half of IT professionals more concerned about internal threats than external ones

Hackers and cyber criminals are often seen as the biggest threat to company IT systems, but a report from behavioral firewall company Preempt shows that insiders, including careless or naive employees, are now viewed as an equally important problem.

The survey carried out for Preempt by Dimensional Research finds that 49 percent of IT security professionals surveyed are more concerned about internal threats than external threats.

Malware installed unintentionally by employees was the top concern of respondents (73 percent), ahead of stolen or compromised credentials (66 percent), stolen data (65 percent), and abuse of admin privileges (63 percent).

The majority of security professionals (87 percent) are most concerned about naive individuals or employees who bend the rules to get their job done. Just 13 percent are more concerned about malicious insiders who set out to do harm.

"Intentional or not, insider threats are real," says Ajit Sancheti, co-founder and CEO of Preempt. "From Snowden to the FDIC, headlines continue to emerge and we need to take a new approach to get ahead of insider threats. Without real-time prevention solutions and improved employee engagement, these threats will not only increase, but find more sophisticated ways to infiltrate and navigate a network. The future of security practices rely on the ability to not only understand users and anticipate attacks, but also how to mitigate threats as quickly as possible".

Security teams are struggling to respond to these threats, with 91 percent reporting that insiders have access to systems they shouldn't, and 70 percent saying they can't effectively monitor privileged user activities.

When it comes to tackling the problem end user engagement and training are seen as essential. 66 percent see value in providing real-time training and feedback when an end user does something they shouldn't. However, while 95 percent provide end user security training, only 10 percent believe it to be very effective.

You can find more about the findings in the full report which is available to download from the Preempt website.

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