• Gurucul Research Study Reveals Privilege Abuse Trends among Infosecurity Professionals in Wide Range of Industries
Almost 65% of the nearly 300 international cybersecurity professionals canvased said they access documents that have nothing to do with their jobs. Meanwhile, nearly 40% of respondents who experienced bad performance reviews also admitted to abusing their privileged access, which is double the overall rate (19%).
“We knew insider privilege abuse was rampant in most enterprises, but these survey results demonstrate that the Infosecurity department is not immune to this practice,” said Saryu Nayyar, CEO of Gurucul. “Detecting impermissible access to resources by authorized users, whether it is malicious or not, is virtually impossible with traditional monitoring tools. That’s why many organizations are turning to security and risk analytics that look at both employee and entity behaviors to identify anomalies indicative of insider threats.”
Highlights of the Report
At the RSA Conference 2020, Gurucul conducted a survey of nearly 300 international cybersecurity professionals, which spanned small (less than 2,500), medium (2,501-10,000) and large (more than 10,000) organizations across a range of industries. Some of the highlights include:
- In finance, 58% said they have emailed company documents to their personal accounts
- In healthcare, 33% have abused their privileged access
- In manufacturing, 78% accessed documents unrelated to their jobs
- In retail, 86% have clicked on a link in an email from someone they didn’t know
- In midsize companies, 62% did not alert IT when their job role had changed
This showcases the problems organizations have with employees behaving outside of the bounds of practical and published security policies. The human element is often the deciding factor in how data breaches occur. Monitoring and deterring risky employee behavior with machine learning-based security analytics is the most effective measure in keeping mayhem to a minimum. People may not realize their behavior in opening the door to cybercriminals, which is why security analytics technology is so critical to maintaining a secure corporate environment.
A full copy of the report is available here
