The Unofficial Law of Endpoint Security Proportionality: The security measures taken to protect an employee’s endpoint are proportionate to the proximity of the employee to the company’s most valued assets. Or, put in simpler terms, the more closely an employee works with a company’s crown jewels, the more essential it is to virtually eliminate the possibility of an endpoint security breach.
A new study finds that one in four consumers admit to using their work email or password to log in to consumer websites and applications such as food delivery apps, online shopping sites and even dating apps.
According to the Identity Defined Security Alliance (IDSA) study, for the majority of companies (72%) it takes one week or longer for a typical worker to obtain access to required systems. Conversely, it takes half of organizations three days or longer to revoke system access after a worker leaves, creating regulatory compliance issues and the risk of data theft. To make matters worse, for the majority of organizations (83%), remote work and other Covid-19 related factors have made managing access to corporate systems more difficult.
Code42 pulled some anonymized, aggregated data from Incydr, a SaaS data risk detection and response solution, showing how users move and exfiltrate data and files. The most exposed type? Business documents.
To help businesses combat the new cybersecurity threats posed by an increase in remote work amid the COVID-19 pandemic, this firm offers cybersecurity awareness training for free.
Despite their preference for remote work, Millennials and Gen Zers experience more technological issues, struggle more with password management, and are far more reckless in their online activity than older demographics. Not only do these younger employees create more work for IT teams and service desk personnel, but they also pose as significant cybersecurity liabilities for corporations.
Employees forced to work remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic altered their online habits, and to minimize hacking risk they needed cybersecurity tools to keep up. As a result, security administrators face a danger they may not have previously anticipated: attacks from insiders.
Business and security leaders are allowing massive Insider Risk problems to fester in the aftermath of the significant shift to remote work in the past year according to Code42's newest Data Exposure Report on Insider Risk, conducted by Ponemon. During that same time, three-quarters (76%) of IT security leaders said that their organizations have experienced one or more data breaches involving the loss of sensitive files and 59% said insider threat will increase in the next two years primarily due to users having access to files they shouldn’t, employees’ preference to work the way they want regardless of security protocols and the continuation of remote work.
While providing access for third-party, non-employees is critical to meeting business objectives, it oftentimes has the unintended consequence of exponentially increasing an organization’s attack surface. With the proper identity-proofing practices and capabilities in place, organizations can verify the identities of their users, support risk management initiatives and better protect critical assets – eliminating the third-party risk management blind spots.
