Internal mistakes are still the biggest reason for cyber incidents, according to new research.
SolarWinds, an IT management software provider, has surveyed 100 German IT professionals about what they believe the biggest cybersecurity risks out there are.
Four in five said that the biggest risk leading to an incident would be internal users making mistakes. That was more than double the 36% who believed that poor network system or application security and the 31% who believed external threat actors infiltrating the organisation’s network or systems would lead to their next cyber incident.
On the subject of insider mistakes, 45% ranked poor password management as their biggest cause of concern and 42% cited sharing passwords as the most common problem.
“Our research shows once again that the biggest risk to the organization comes from the inside, aligning with research SolarWinds conducted in other regions earlier this year,” said Tim Brown, vice president of security, SolarWinds.
“This underscores the continued need for organizations to address the human side of IT security and consistently educate users on how to avoid mistakes, while encouraging an environment of learning and training. However, that alone is not enough; tech pros also need the best possible technology to effectively fight against both threats from the inside and potentially more sophisticated threats from the outside.”
SolarWinds is not the only organization to raise the concerns about the insiders. For instance, Tony Pepper, CEO at Egress, recently told FinTech Global about the need to raise awareness about the insider threat.
Similarly, Infosys, the digital services provider, recently issued a report which showed that 76% ranked employees and insiders as their biggest cybersecurity threat. This was only topped by the fear of external hackers, which 84% stated as a concern.
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