IT Pros Consider People Biggest Threat to Cloud Security

Who poses the biggest threat to IT security? People. Several studies have found that people are most likely to put organizations at risk for a cyber attack. Find out more -- and how companies can combat risky behavior...

While cyberattacks anywhere are always a concern, the true weakness in cloud, endpoint and network security is people. The Cloud Security Survey from Netwrix found that 61 percent of respondents believe their own employees pose more risk to data security in the cloud than anyone else.

The second annual survey polled 600 IT professionals from technology, government, healthcare, finance, manufacturing and other industries about cloud and data security.

Cloud security, visibility worries

According to the findings, 70% of respondents believe security and privacy of data and systems in the cloud remains a concern. The top three cloud security worries include unauthorized access, malware, and denial of service (DoS) attacks.

Ninety-five percent of respondents also consider visibility into user activities in the cloud to be an important element in cloud providers’ security guarantees. However, it's unrealistic for companies to rely on others to secure corporate data.

Addressing risky behavior

The Institute of Information Security Professionals (IISP) says there are several ways people are putting organizations at cyber risk:

• Carelessness with opening links in emails, downloading attachments and visiting threat-carrying sites
• Lack of technical skills
• Poor decisions around IT security strategy and budgets

We’ve talked about the Three Faces of the Insider Threat, which are the same across networks, endpoints and the cloud, and how understanding this behavior can help mitigate those threats. But it's also about knowing what the data is, where it is, and how to protect it.

Better visibility, better strategy

While the majority of cloud applications lack enterprise-grade security and cause fragmentation that increases the risk of cyberattack, the real problem is visibility. That's where Absolute comes into play.

We recently introduced the first Security Posture Dashboard to provide an at-a-glance measure of the health and compliance of endpoint devices and applications. Part of Absolute’s self-healing Data and Device Security solution, the Dashboard gives companies an easier, intuitive way to see and assess data-at-risk.

Learn more...

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