Seventy-four per cent of organizations consider employees' negligence the most repeated peril, according to a survey conducted by SearchInform, a global developer of risk management solutions.

Corporate trade secrets were leaked in 35 per cent companies, technical information and personal data was breached in 17 per cent and 16 per cent respectively, according to data obtained by SearchInform during a series of conferences holding roadshows titled "Money Loss Prevention: Futuristic Security".

An ordinary employee appears to be the number one violator (59 per cent) and almost a half of companies (49 per cent) prefer to dismiss employees who leak sensitive info, 34 per cent penalize or cut bonuses down, 32 per cent reprimand their workers, 12 per cent prosecute the employees, and only 8 per cent impose no sanctions.

Human factor is assigned to be the most significant threat for corporate data according to the respondents representing each of the regions, which participated in the survey.

The problem is getting worse, because the responsibilities are given to different experts from different departments. Sixty-eight per cent of Mena companies don’t have a specific department monitoring information usage and assign IT officers to manage data safety issues.

Speaking about the monitoring of corporate channels, as few as 8 per cent of companies control all the data channels, the survey said.

The top three controlled data channels include email (73 per cent), external storage devices (48 per cent), and telephony (35 per cent). However, there is forbidden software, for example, 40 per cent of Mena companies disallow TeamViewer.

In 2018, 49 per cent of organizations hid the fact of data leakage. Twenty-one per cent informed the victims and apologized to them, and only 3 per cent made an official statement in the media.

“Today, information security and risk management cover much more than traditional threats. High-profile incidents such as fraud, theft, embezzlement, etc., increase the need to protect corporate resources and effectively manage risks within a company,” said Alexei Parfentiev, leading analyst at SearchInform.

“We demonstrate a new approach, you need not only to protect your company's resources, you need to protect your company from financial losses resulting from various kinds of actions. And employees perform these actions, information itself does not breach. So you need to deal with the human factor, which the majority of information security experts all over the world call the number one threat.”

SearchInform held a number of seminars conducting road shows in four regions – South Africa, Mena, Latin America and CIS – during 2018.

The analytics department of SearchInform presents the results of the annual anonymous survey on the relevant level of data risk awareness and expertise. The survey encompasses each and every scope of the security level situation in 10 industries, including IT, power engineering, manufacturing and transport, finance and banking, retail, hospitality, healthcare, state defence, logistics and construction.

The results are processed and analyzed in order to provide the specialists and companies with the most relevant data on the experience and opinions businesses can share anonymously to see the weak spots and enforce the corporate perimeter. – TradeArabia News Service