While hacks from outside perpetrators seem to make all the headlines, but what if the majority of bad actors already have legitimate access to your systems?
IBM has collected data from 8,000 client devices and come up with a surprising conclusion – that 60 per cent of attacks were actually conducted by “insiders.”
In this case, insiders were defined as anyone with physical or remote access to a company’s assets, including employees, business partners, or contractors – anyone who was deemed trustworthy.
These individuals have what many external hackers don’t – knowledge of a system’s weakness. It calls into question whether companies need to improve work culture even just to avoid creating disgruntled employees.
Granted, some 15.5 per cent of the total of “attacks” were actually caused by accident. Nevertheless, the remaining 44.5 per cent are deemed malicious and still outnumber the 40 per cent of malicious attacks from external sources.
