Employee negligence now equally worrying for companies as cyber-attack data breaches

Data leakages of internal systems caused either by cyberattacks (20%) or employees (21%) are the most concerning security issue encountered by SMBs and Enterprises in the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, Kaspersky IT Security Economics survey respondents claim. Heightened concerns over data protection increasingly also turns business leaders’ attention to the transparency policies of their suppliers.

Global digitalization has inevitably led to massive amounts of data being shared and stored online. According to the latest estimates, the volume of data generated, consumed, copied, and stored is projected to reach more than 180 zettabytes by 2025. However, more and more people question companies’ ability to keep their data secure which leads to decline in confidence towards business.

Kaspersky’s global research, conducted among IT decision-makers, shows a loss or exposure of corporate and customer information because of a data breach is a major headache for companies – 55% of respondents from organizations of all sizes named this issue the most challenging aspect related to IT security. Among other most common concerns there are cost of securing increasingly complex technology environments and issues with cloud infrastructure adoption with 43% and 38% share respectively.

Which of the following do you regard as the most concerning business issues related to IT security in your organization?

Thinking more specifically about the most distributing security challenges respondents mostly indicated leakage of data from internal systems caused by cyber-attacks (20%) and by employees (21%). These incidents have topped identifying vulnerabilities in company’s IT system and incidents affecting IT infrastructure hosted by a third-party noted by 20% and 19% respectively. 

Given that data protection has turned into the most alarming business security issue, companies are now attaching considerable importance to their suppliers’ and contractors’ transparency policies. Of those questioned, 96% consider the presence, or absence of transparency policies is important for going into business with a supplier or contractor. And while 81 % of surveyed organizations worldwide already have transparency policies in their organizations, 82% confirmed their readiness to invest resources in developing it further.

“Today, we see organizations are being more conscientious when it comes to data security and that a responsible approach towards data management is becoming an essential when considering suppliers and contractors. To help their customers and partners ascertain that the required standards for ensuring   data security are applied, more and more companies are adopting transparency policies. Kaspersky has been one of the industry’s pioneers in building digital trust — we have provided our stakeholders with a number of instruments to validate the trustworthiness of our solutions and business operations, and we’re determined to further work with our partners to turn transparency into an industry-wide standard for the sake of greater cyber resilience,” comments Yuliya Shlychkova, the head of Public Affairs at Kaspersky.

To minimize the risk of any attacks and data breaches for businesses, Kaspersky recommends using endpoint protection with proven track record providing capabilities for threat detection and response. In addition, managed protection services will help organizations with their attack investigation and expert response. Comprehensive cybersecurity awareness training teaching how to avoid common security threats is also required to reduce the likelihood of incidents caused by employees. To gain more insights about IT security costs and budgets in businesses in 2022 visit the interactive Kaspersky Calculator. The full report “IT Security Economics 2022” is available to download here.