IDC: Most Insider Leaks are Accidents
When it comes to security breaches leading to data loss, accidents caused by insiders are more frequent and generally do more damage than those caused by insiders with malicious intents, shoes a new study published by industry research firm IDC industry research firm and sponsored bu RSA.
According to a report, 52 % of respondents characterized their insider threat incidents as predominantly accidental, while only 19% believed the threats were deliberate. Another 26 % said their insider issues were an equal combination of accidental and malicious threats.
“One of the things that jumped out at us from the study was how many insider incidents are unintentional,” says Chris Young, senior vice president of RSA products, quoted by Dark Reading. “These are individual actors who often are just trying to do their jobs and don’t understand that what they are doing is dangerous.”
“Employers view their relationship with employees as one of trust and recognize their people are their biggest asset,” said Chris Christiansen, program vice president of security products at IDC. “But the vast nature of an organization’s infrastructure, coupled with a dispersed, often global, employee base and complex internal user mix of employees, consultants, partners, and outsourcers make addressing the risks posed by its internal users the biggest security challenge that CXOs currently face. Whether the risk is intentional or not, it’s there. It’s real.”
The study also showed that in the past 12 months the 400 respondents that took part in the study admitted to 6244 incidents of unintentional data loss, 5830 malware/spyware attacks from within the enterprise, and 5794 incidents of risks created by excessive privilege and access control rights. The total number of internal security incidents was of a whoooping 57485 issues for the year.
As a response to this huge number of security only 40% plan to invest more in their on better handling their internal security risks. We would have definitely expected a higher percentage, given said number of incidents!
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:29 pm
[...] IDC: Most Insider Leaks are Accidents Agent Smith shares with us a recent IDC study on security breaches and data loss, and you might be [...]