Where insider threats sit on the IT security agenda

How concerned are IT professionals about insider threats? Are the common assumptions about security threats being a primarily external concern the same for those whose job it is to mitigate these risks?

In short, yes.

When asking IT decision makers across the UK and US to list their three greatest security concerns, we found that insider threats comes fourth on the list with only 21% putting it in their top three, behind viruses (67%), data loss (47%) and hacking (40%).

So insider threats, including password sharing or employees accessing sensitive information, appears not to be a great concern to the majority of IT decision makers.

There is a point to be made here however, in that data loss is a concern for more than twice the amount that insider threats are, and as we know employees are the most likely cause of data loss.

So why aren’t IT professionals more concerned about this risk?

Which area of your IT causes you the greatest security concern?

The threat of virus 67.1%

Data loss 46.9%

Hacking 39.3%

Insider threat 21.4%

Hardware 17.4%

The cloud 9.4%

No concerns about security 5.0%

BYOD 4.2%

DDoS 2.6%

Other 1.4%