How Cloud, BYOD Strategies Create Insider Threats

Although adoption of the cloud and BYOD practices is generally perceived as positive for businesses, these shifts can fuel insider threats, a poll of cyber-security pros finds.

One in three organizations have experienced an insider attack in the last year, and 74% feel vulnerable to insider threats.

56% of organizations believe insider leaks have increased in the last year.

66% of respondents said preventing insider attacks is more difficult than protecting against external threats.

One-third of organizations said careless or malicious user behavior resulted in data leakage, up slightly from a year ago.

71% of respondents are most concerned with inadvertent leaks that are the result of unsanctioned app usage, unintended external sharing and unsecured mobile devices. Other concerns include negligence (68%) and malicious insiders (61%).

60% of organizations said privileged users, more than any other user group, posed the greatest security risk.

Cyber-security professionals believe a lack of employee training (62%) is the biggest cause of many insider leaks, followed by insufficient data protection solutions (57%), more devices with access to sensitive data (54%) and more data leaving the network perimeter (48%).

56% of organizations use some kind of analytics solution to address anomalous behavior, but only 15% have user behavior analytics in place and only 8% use predictive analytics. One-third do not have any analytics solutions to detect insider threats.

Collaboration tools (44%) were perceived as the most vulnerable to insider threats, followed by cloud storage apps (39%), finance and accounting (39%), social media (34%), custom business apps (33%), and productivity apps (28%).

64% of organizations can detect a breach within a week, up from 42% a year ago. Only 23% take a month or longer to identify insider breaches.

Policies and training (57%), identity and access management solutions (52%), encryption (50%) and data leakage prevention (49%) topped the list of the best tools for preventing insider attacks.