74 percent of enterprises feel vulnerable to insider threats

The shift of systems to the cloud has made enterprise data visible beyond the perimeter of the organization, employees can access it from anywhere, and that has an effect on insider threats.

Data protection company Bitglass has released its report on insider threats in the enterprise, featuring insights from over 500 cyber security professionals on the state of insider data leaks and the tools used to mitigate these threats.

The study shows that, in a third of organizations surveyed, careless or malicious user behavior resulted in data leakage, up slightly from a year ago, and 74 percent feel vulnerable to insider threats. Furthermore, a majority of respondents (56 percent) believe insider leaks have become more frequent in the last year.

"Adoption of cloud and BYOD are positive developments, but organizations that have limited cross-app visibility will struggle to detect anomalous behavior and need to rethink their approach to data security," says Nat Kausik, CEO of Bitglass. "The reality is that cloud apps have made data more readily accessible and insider threats more likely -- it's up to the enterprise to put adequate data controls and policies in place to secure vital data".

Among other findings are that 71 percent of cybersecurity professionals are most concerned with inadvertent leaks that are the result of risky unsanctioned app usage, unintended external sharing and unsecured mobile devices. Negligence (68 percent) and malicious insiders (61 percent) were also major concerns among respondents. Privileged users are seen as posing the greatest security risk by 60 percent of organizations.

Cloud and mobile are forcing IT departments to rethink detection and prevention. Cybersecurity professionals agree that lack of employee training (62 percent), insufficient data protection solutions (57 percent), more devices with access to sensitive data (54 percent) and more data leaving the network perimeter (48 percent) are at the core of many insider leaks.

Collaboration tools (44 percent) and cloud storage apps (39 percent) were perceived to be most vulnerable to insider threats, as careless users are easily able to share data externally or lose a mobile device that contains sensitive information.

You can read more on the findings in the full report which is available to download from the Bitglass website.

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