SailPoint have just released the results of their 2016 Market Pulse Survey, which takes the views of over 1000 workers from all over the world. The results show that employees don’t see security as something worth prioritising – despite the fact a vast majority of them would be annoyed if their personal data was breached!
The most shocking finding was that one in 5 of the employees surveyed would be wiling to sell their login details to a third party. Anyone who’s had to deal with the after-effects of insider threats before can tell you they’re a nightmare when it comes to clearing up the mess as it’s not always easy to tell which account was compromised, or for how long it’s been compromised.
56% of those willing to sell their work passwords would do it for less than £700 – peanuts in comparison to what a resulting breach could cost!
What SailPoint has illustrated is the negligence on behalf of employees – the two findings above say it all. What’s more, the majority of respondents (63%) are using the same password across applications, effectively creating a master-key for their work login, emails, social media accounts and beyond. Smart move.
This is especially worrying given that organisations are struggling to keep up in the face of employees making their jobs that much more difficult. SailPoint found that one in three employees admittied to purchasing a SaaS application without informing IT. Additionally, 39% of respondents admitted to having access to a wide variety of corporate accounts after leaving their last job.
In order for this to change, it’s evident that our workers need to be conditioned to work with security in mind and feel confident in being able to communciate with IT, reporting risks and developments as they occur. Otherwise we can continue as we are now and expect 2016 to be just like 2015 – full of breaches that line the pockets of cyber criminals.
