British Companies More Exposed to Insider Threats than US or Australian Ones

According to the results of a recent survey, British companies are more likely to suffer insider data breaches because employees in the United Kingdom are twice more likely to mishandle sensitive data than those in US or Australia.

The conclusion is based on the responses of 3,484 employees from the three countries to a survey conducted by identity management firm SellPoint.

According to the company, almost half (48%) of the surveyed UK employees said they would be comfortable with handling sensitive data stored by their employer, regardless of whether their access to it was intentional or not. In comparison, only 29% of Australian and 22% of US employees would do this.

Furthermore, 27% of British employees would forward company files to third-parties that are not employed by the company. The rate is considerably higher than in US (10%) or Australia (12%).

Finally, 24% UK employees would take company files home with them, a higher number that in the other two surveyed countries. Only 9% of Americans and 8% of Australians would consider doing this.

"Organizations should be very concerned about the number of employees that openly admitted to misusing proprietary data," said SailPoint co-founder Jackie Gilbert.

"These results show that insider threats represent a significant risk to the business. Some of the biggest and most costly data breaches have been directly tied to company employees," she adds.

The company points out that having a written policy is not enough to prevent insider data breaches and that strong access controls to information are also required. British companies have even more at risk by not properly dealing with such threats since fines for violations of the UK Data Protection Act can raise to £500,000 ($821,000).