Unintentional Security Issues and Malware

There're a great deal of accidental security issues but i'm focusing on how the human factor intercedes with data security and integrity.

Up to 28% of Enterprise Data Security Incidents Come from Inside

While hackers are growing more and more sophisticated, much of the threat of organizations actually comes from inside.

That isn’t to say that any of the employees has malicious intent, though it’s possible, but they may be poorly trained, or the enterprise data security policies may be poorly enforced. All of these leading to Unintentional Security Issues.

32% of companies surveyed said that insider events were “more costly or damaging” than similar attacks coming from the outside.

But in order to toughen up your security stance and protect yourself from the enemy within, it’s important to know how your employees may be compromising your digital security.

2014 was a rough year for enterprise data security, if the high profile breaches of Sony, JPMorgan and Home Depot told us anything. It was especially rough for AT&T, who suffered not one but two separate malicious insider attacks, resulting in the exposure of customers’ social security numbers, driver’s license numbers and birth dates, as well as hefty fines for the mobile giant.

Any data breach can threaten your company’s reputation, let alone one coming from inside. So what could AT&T have done to keep their customers safe?

How You Can Prevent It

2. Poor Password Practices

All it takes is one employee with a password like “Hola123” or “admin123” to give a hacker easy access to your company’s most sensitive (and valuable) data. So changing passwords every three months at the very least, and that the passwords certain security requirements.

3. Weak Access Policies

Again, each employee should only have access to the systems and data they need to access, when they need to access them and that access needs to be revoked as soon as the employee no longer needs it.

4. Unsafe Downloads

No matter how your employee gets it, though, you’re lucky if the damage is isolated to that person’s work computer. More likely, it will spread through your network, and if you don’t have the proper network isolation, it can spread to the servers containing your most precious data. So daily backups is key to avoid this.

References:
Virtru. (2018). 6 Common Ways Employees Compromise Enterprise Data Security (And What You Can Do About It). Virtru. Retrieved From: https://www.virtru.com/blog/enterprise-data-security/

Kaspersky. (2018). The Human Factor in IT Security: How Employees are Making Businesses Vulnerable from Within. Kaspersky. Retrieved From: https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/the-human-factor-in-it-security/