PC Data Security Blog

What’s scarier than a hacker? Your employees.

In a study recently released by Compuware, results showed most data breaches are caused by employees, not hackers. The survey of 1,112 IT workers found that only one percent of data losses this year were the result of hackers. Here’s a breakdown of the results:

Negligent insiders were overwhelmingly cited as the cause of data breaches in the survey. What does this mean for company security policies? Will we soon see a shift towards tying up the internal loose ends that compromise company data?

It might be a good idea. Especially when you add to the equation the data from other security studies showing the impact of a data breach on a small company. One-third of companies in one survey said that a major security breach could put their company out of business. Additionally, a data breach that exposed personal information would cost companies an average of $268,000 to inform their customers–even if the lost data is never used. Or, to break it down further, which a Forrester survey did, a breach will cost a company between $90 and $305 per exposed record.

In today’s economy, every dollar spent in a security budget has to get scrutinized. A better strategy for security professionals is to put those dollars toward preventitive measures that combat insider negligence instead of throwing money at an outside threat.

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