As we reported yesterday, privileged users can represent a significant risk to enterprise security. A new report from cyber security company BeyondTrust underlines this with findings that show organizations adhering to best practices for privileged access management are much better at mitigating the risks of a data breach.

The survey of more than 500 IT, IS, legal and compliance experts split its overall scores into top- and bottom-tier groups and finds that top-tier companies were much more likely to have a centralized password management policy -- 92 percent in contrast with just 25 percent of bottom-tier organizations.

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All businesses are aware of the danger posed by insider threats, but those threats are multiplied when they involve privileged user accounts.

Damage caused by privileged users is the most extensive, the hardest to mitigate and the hardest to detect as it involves authorized users doing things they are authorized to do. A new report from access management specialist Forcepoint in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute looks at the gap between organizations' awareness of the problem and their ability to solve it.

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Business collaboration tools are increasingly essential in the enterprise, but they need to keep content secure, especially in professional services environments that handle sensitive client data.

Collaboration specialist Huddle is tackling this with the launch of its Unified Authentication Portal. Using a single sign on, this lets account managers apply policies across Huddle's web, desktop and mobile apps in one step, simplifying the process of keeping content secure.

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CFOs and Finance Directors have long been warned against the inaccuracies of spreadsheets when it comes to financial planning and analysis. However, as with everything in life, change can often be difficult to accept and this is often the case when it comes to businesses and their financial tools. Sometimes this is because they are reluctant to try something new, but alarmingly, more often than not, it is because the businesses are not aware of the different options available.

Research from Accountagility shows that 72 percent of CFOs consider their firms to be too reliant on spreadsheets. The larger the company, the more spreadsheets are deployed, and the greater the issues and headaches that occur. While Excel is clearly a central tool in many offices, businesses must also consider finance-friendly alternatives that address these risks whilst also respecting the need for control.

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As the importance of software to almost all businesses has grown, so the competition to bring new releases to market and ensure they're error free is fierce.

Open source code collaboration specialist GitLab is addressing this issue with a new tool that enables developer teams to improve the software release management process, providing real-time visibility of project issues across an organization.

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Data breaches are everywhere, and companies feel they’re not doing a good job at preventing them. They are, however, taking steps to try and counter the trend. This is according to a new report by business documents management organization M-Files Corporation and the Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM).

According to the report, more than a third (38 percent) of organizations have suffered at least one data breach in the past 12 months. Almost a third (31 percent) feel their company isn’t doing all it can to protect sensitive information, and 36 percent say their company doesn’t have a "formally documented policy" regarding data storage, management and sharing.

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According to reports, Cisco Systems is planning a mass jobs cull with 5,500 jobs in danger -- or around seven percent of its global workforce.

Cisco, the world’s biggest networking equipment company, is expected to announce more details of any potential cuts in the next few weeks a part of an ongoing transition to a more software and cloud-orientated strategy.

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Pretty much every finance organization in London (97 percent of them) is worried about how reliant it is on spreadsheets. These are the results of a new research by finance function solutions provider, Accountagility.

The worry stems from faults experienced when using it for both planning and reporting, as four out of five (80 percent) of organizations have had such experiences. Just under half (49 percent) also consider a problem the fact that manual effort is needed to both validate and analyze Excel data.

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A common concern among companies is if their resources are being used wisely. Never before has this been more pressing than when considering data storage options. Teams question the inherent worth of their data, and often fall into the trap of viewing it as an expense that weighs too heavily on the budget. This is where wisdom is needed with respect to efficient resource use and the task of successful data storage. Companies must ask themselves how storing particular data will benefit their business overall.

Incorporating a data storage plan into a business budget has certainly proven to be easier said than done. Many companies fail at carrying out their desires to store data once they recognize the cost associated with the tools that are needed. You may be wondering why the failure to follow through on these plans is so common. After all, who wouldn’t want to budget in such an important part of company security? The truth of the matter is that it can all be very overwhelming once the VAST amount of data that actually exists is considered, and it can be even more stressful to attempt to manage it all.

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Researchers at Kaspersky Lab have uncovered a new wave of targeted attacks against the industrial and engineering sectors in 30 countries around the world.

Named 'Operation Ghoul' by Kaspersky's researchers, the attacks use spear-phishing emails and malware based on a commercial spyware kit to seek out valuable business-related data stored in their victims' networks.

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Skype for Business users have had a pretty rough time connecting with other platforms (like Cisco or Avaya), but that’s no longer the case as the Cisco Meeting Server gets released.

Cisco's new product will allow Skype for Business users to easily connect to users on other platforms by clicking a link. The company believes its product will completely reshape office collaboration, and the impact will be "huge".

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A new report from Kaspersky Lab has found that large businesses that struggle to attract sufficiently skilled security experts end up paying up to three times more to recover from a cyber security incident.

The much talked-about skills gap in the security industry continues to cause problems for businesses, as increasing wages, a general shortage of expert availability and the need for more specialists are all prevalent.

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While 96 percent of US enterprises expect to increase their investment in cloud management over the next five years, the majority of IT decision makers are not using those services to their fullest potential according to a new study.

The survey findings from Wakefield Research and cloud automation specialist Logicworks show that 80 percent of the 400 surveyed IT decision makers believe that their company's leadership team underestimates the time and cost required to maintain resources in the cloud.

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Enterprise data can have multiple elements which makes it difficult to map to different systems and can prevent businesses from getting the most from their information.

Data integration specialist SnapLogic is introducing a new release of its Elastic Integration Platform with new additions to its library of more than 400 intelligent connectors called Snaps.

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Salesforce has announced it is buying data analytics startup BeyondCore. In a tweet posted earlier this week, Marc Benioff says: "I am thrilled announce @Salesforce has acquired @beyondcoreinc to enhance the AI capabilities of Analytics Cloud".

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed, but we do know that BeyondCore will integrate into Saleforce’s Analytics Cloud, and will leverage its AI knowledge.

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