Almost two thirds of data breaches are a direct result of human error
- Details
- Published: Monday, 20 May 2019 09:50
Apricorn has released new research which found that 89 percent of surveyed UK organizations have experienced a data breach, and human error is still the prevailing cause. Almost two thirds (63 percent) of respondents noted that human error was the main cause of a data breach within their organization. A lack of encryption and phishing emails also ranked in the top five main causes.
Almost half of organizations’ (47 percent) remote workers have knowingly put corporate data at risk of a breach, and over a third (34 percent) of respondents stated that their organization’s mobile/remote workers don’t care about security - a 16 percent increase compared with findings from the previous year.
When questioned on the biggest problems associated with implementing a cyber security plan for remote/mobile working, thirty percent of respondents stated that managing all of the technology employees require for mobile working is too complex. 21 percent stated that they cannot be certain that their data is adequately secured for remote/mobile working, with 14 percent highlighting that they have no control over where company data goes and where it is stored. However, this an improvement on previous years as this percentage continues to decrease, where in 2018 it was 27 percent, and in 2017 38 percent admitted to having no control over where company data goes and is stored.
Additionally, half of the organizations surveyed expect that mobile and remote workers will expose their business to a breach, showing a huge mistrust in their employees’ ability to keep data secure. Worse still, IT decision makers trust third parties to look after business-critical data more than they trust their own colleagues, with over 50 percent saying they trusted third parties with their critical business data, but they are only provided with access to the data they require or, all the data they share with them is encrypted.
About the survey
The research was conducted by Censuswide, an independent survey company. Censuswide interviewed 100 IT decision makers in the UK, during April 2019. Respondents to this research came from finance, business and professional services, IT, telecoms, manufacturing and utilities organizations with more than 1,000 employees.
