Data Breaches Caused by Insiders Increase in Frequency and Cost
Ponemon Institute and ObserveIT have released The 2018 Cost of Insider Threats: Global Study, on what companies have spent to deal with a data breach caused by a careless or negligent employee or contractor, criminal or malicious insider or a credential thief. While the negligent insider is the root cause of most breaches, the bad actor who steals employees’ credentials is responsible for the most costly incidents.
The first study on the cost of insider threats was conducted in 2016 and focused exclusively on companies in the United States. In this year’s benchmark study, 717 IT and IT security practitioners in 159 organizations in North America (United States and Canada), Europe, Middle East and Africa, and Asia-Pacific were interviewed.
According to the research, if the incident involved a negligent employee or contractor, companies spent an average of $283,281. The average cost more than doubles if the incident involved an imposter or thief who steals credentials ($648,845). Hackers cost the organizations represented in this research an average of $607,745 per incident.
We conclude that companies need to intensify their efforts to minimize the insider risk because of rising costs and frequency of incidents. Since 2016 the average number of incidents involving employee or contractor negligence has increased from 10.5 to 13.4. The average number of credential theft incidents has tripled over the past two years, from 1.0 to 2.9. In addition, these incidents are not resolved quickly. Our analysis revealed that it took the companies in our study more than two months on average to contain an insider incident. Only 16 percent of incidents were contained in less than 30 days.
We hope you will download the full report: https://www.observeit.com/ponemon-report-cost-of-insider-threats/
Warmest regards,
Dr. Larry Ponemon
Chairman and Founder
Ponemon Institute