News Feature | February 11, 2015

Study Shows Insider Threats Are A Risk For 93 Percent Of U.S. Organizations

Christine Kern

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Mobile Device's Breach Risk

More than 90 percent of U. S. organizations are vulnerable to insider threats, with 59 percent pointing to privileged users as the chief danger.  This is according to a study published by Vormetric, a leader in enterprise data security for physical, Big Data, public, private, and hybrid cloud environments.

The 2015 Insider Threat Report (ITR), is based on the surveys of more than 818 IT decision makers in various countries, including 408 in the United States to determine how enterprises perceive security threats, the types of employees considered most dangerous, environments at the greatest risk for data loss, and the steps organizations are taking to secure data.

Simply by having access to sensitive company data, privileged users may be putting their organizations at risk, whether intentionally or not.  The study also reveals:

  • Preventing a data breach is the highest or second highest priority for IT security spending for 54 percent of respondents’ organizations.
  • 46 percent of U.S. respondents believe cloud environments are at the greatest risk for loss of sensitive data in their organization, yet 47 percent believe databases have the greatest amount of sensitive data at risk.
  • 44 percent of U.S. respondents say their organization had experienced a data breach or failed a compliance audit in the last year.
  • 34 percent of U.S. respondents say their organizations are protecting sensitive data because of a breach at a partner or a competitor.

“The safety and security of cloud environments is a key concern for enterprises across the globe,” John Engates, CTO of Rackspace, states in the report press release. “The results of this report highlight the need for addressing the risk of data breaches and compliance in the enterprise.”

“As the past year demonstrates, these threats are real and need to be addressed,” said Alan Kessler, CEO for Vormetric. “The results indicate there is still disagreement about where corporate data, which is most at risk, actually resides. Our experience, observations, and conversations with customers have taught us that even if the situation isn’t entirely black and white, organizations’ use of encryption, access controls, and data access monitoring greatly reduce their risk and exposure.”

The survey results and research report are available from Vormetric and can be found here.