A new report by Atlas VPN, has revealed that most of the cybersecurity incidences across the world happened as a result of information released by insiders.
Specifically, the report findings show that 65percent of organizations suffered from one or more insider attacks in the last 12 months, while 41percent of businesses experienced between 1 and 5 insider attacks in the last 12 months, as of June 2020.
Other revelations from the data analysed indicated that 12percent of respondents saw between 6-10 insider attacks in the last year, over 7 percent of company representatives stated that they experienced more than 20 attacks in the last 12 months.
72percent of interviewed cybersecurity professionals believe that insider threats became more frequent in 2020, even as nearly half (49%) of surveyed leaders stated that the remediations after an insider attack cost less than $100 thousand.
Commenting on the report, Rachel Welch, COO of Atlas VPN, explains why insider threats are much more difficult to defend against: “Outside hackers have to find ways to break through firewalls and other security measures to get into the company’s databases. On the other hand, many internal users already have access to those databases, so the same safety steps are not applicable.”
Insider threats come from employees or other internal users, such as contractors, that have access to the company’s internal databases. There are two types of malicious insiders — those with harmful intent and those who are simply negligent.
Incidents caused by insider threats are becoming more common, so let’s look at the monetary damages caused by these events. As a side note, if the incident does go public, companies’ public image gets hurt, which, in the long run, can cause even more losses than the immediate incident remediation costs.
Nearly half (49%) of surveyed leaders stated that the remediations after an insider attack cost less than $100 thousand. Another 30% of respondents expressed that monetary damages caused by a single incident are anywhere between $100 thousand and $500 thousand.