94% of companies are Employee
powerless to prevent
Misuse Is
confidential data from
Biggest Threat
leaving their company
41% of organisations see employee
misuse of the corporate network as
their biggest security threat,
An independent survey according to a recent survey
commissioned by email conducted by LSI, a leading provider
management company of innovative silicon, systems and
Mimecast has revealed that software technologies for the
an alarming 94% of storage and networking markets.
companies are powerless to
stop confidential information The survey of 250 IT Directors and
from leaving their board-level decision makers, found
organisation by email. The that after employee misuse, 21% of
survey revealed that just 6% organisations saw traditional
of all respondents were hacking attacks as the biggest
confident that anyone security threat to their organisation,
attempting to send closely followed by widening
confidential company network perimeters (15%) and
information by email out of the difficult to ensure the appropriate flow finally terrorist threats and lack of
organisation would be prevented from of information outside the encryption in data centres.
doing so. organisation. Especially since the
majority of employees are now John Bromhead, Tarari Content
The independent survey, conducted knowledge workers with access to Processors Product Marketing, LSI
amongst a sample of 125 IT managers, significant amounts of confidential commented: “The above figures
revealed that 32% of companies would data.” According to Bob Tarzey, show that staff education is key
not even be aware that confidential security analyst at Quo Circa, “These when it comes to security.
information had been leaked so would figures do not surprise me – on the Organisations need to make sure
be unable to take steps to minimise whole employees are not sending stuff that staff are fully aware of the
the damage or track down the source out maliciously, but through risks they can bring to an
of the information. However, 62% carelessness or lack of fore-thought. organisation when downloading
would be able to retrospectively Education can help to some extent, but images or leaving passwords
identify the email leak once the many employees are using around the office.”
information had been sent, but communications tools all day, every
confessed to being unable to prevent day and mistakes will happen, so Education, however, is only half of
its disclosure. According to Dr James having checks in place makes sense. the solution; this needs to be
Blake, security expert at Mimecast, Affordability of available technology to backed up by a robust security
“The picture revealed by this survey tackle the problem is also a problem, system, especially when
points to fundamental security issues as most businesses are unable to considering the growing amount of
with protecting not only a company’s invest in the high end, on-premise data crossing an organisation’s
own data but also customer data like Data Leak Prevention (DLP) products network. Threats such as Trojan
patient records or credit card that large business can, so the Horses, spam and hackers are
numbers.” He adds, “With the blurring availability of on-demand services like evolving year-on-year and failure to
of boundaries between company those offered by Mimecast to achieve invest in the latest security runs the
employees and external consultants, the same end is welcome providing risk of being affected by any or all
contractors, outsourcers and other performance is not adversely of the above.
third parties, it is now much more affected.”
September 2008
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