John Mello reports in TechNewsWorld
Security Execs Sweat Insider Threats
Insider threats are becoming increasingly worrisome to corporate security executives. That is one of the findings in a survey of C-level business people Nuix released last week.
“The insider threat seems to be a bigger concern this year than it was in previous years,” said Keith Lowry, Nuix’s senior vice president of business threat intelligence and analysis.
“People are recognizing that it is a significant weakness that has yet to be fully addressed by most organizations,” he told TechNewsWorld.
Insider threat programs are widespread across the broad set of industries represented by 28 high-level executives participating in the study, which was conducted by Ari Kaplan Advisors. More than two-thirds (71 percent) of the executives said they had either an insider threat program or an insider threat policy.
Throwing Money at Problem
Organizations are spending more money fighting insider threats, the survey found.
Nearly a quarter (21 percent) of the surveyed execs said some of their increases in security spending went to bolstering protections against insider threats.
What’s more, 14 percent of the participants noted that 40 percent or more of their security budgets went to combating insider threats.
Despite those efforts, the organizations in the survey still had problems tracking access to their critical data.
Most of them (93 percent) could identify their critical data, but only 69 percent said they knew what people did with critical data after they accessed it.
Not Just IT’s Problem
“The insider is a dynamic threat, and most organizations are taking a static approach to stopping it,” Lowry said.
“This is not just an IT problem. It’s a risk management issue. The C-suite needs to realize that this is a bigger issue,” he noted.
“It has to be looked at from the perspective of the whole organization, not just a piece of any part of the organization,” Lowry added.
As in the 2014 survey, participants cited human behavior as the greatest threat to their security. Last year, 88 percent of those surveyed identified human behavior as their biggest threat. This year, it was even higher: 93 percent.