Nine out of ten IT pros have experienced a data breach

Exonar, has today published research revealing that 94 percent of IT pros have experienced a data breach, and an overwhelming majority (79 percent) are worried that their current organization could be next.

The survey of 500 IT professionals found that when it comes to cybersecurity, employee data breaches are seen as the biggest risk to an organization. Two fifths (40 percent) of respondents named employee data breaches as the biggest overall threat to information security in the coming year, while a fifth (21 percent) said external attacks from cybercriminals are the biggest risk to information security, and 20 per cent believe it is ransomware/malware attacks.

When looking at what causes employee data breaches, more than half (51 percent) of IT professionals say these most commonly occur through external email services such as Gmail and Outlook. However, 42 percent say employee data breaches have happened through collaboration tools such as Slack and Dropbox, and 41 per cent through SMS/messaging services. Just 6 percent of those surveyed said they had never knowingly experienced a data breach.

Despite data breaches being front of mind for IT teams, 95 percent of IT professionals say it’s a challenge to get visibility across their organizations’ data estate, and only 39 percent of organizations are taking active steps to gain visibility of their data.

“In simply performing their jobs, employees can unintentionally be the source of a data breach – by leaving high-risk information unprotected in the wrong place. It’s the responsibility of the company to provide the right methodology, technology, and processes that enable the workforce to continue to operate without burdening teams with undue process,” said Danny Reeves, CEO, Exonar.

“These days, every company is a data company, and large organizations often have thousands of systems and storage facilities. Unless companies are actively taking steps to know and understand their data, they’re leaving themselves vulnerable.”