Staff Report
Dubai – Employees hide IT security incidents in 53% of business in the UAE – that’s according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, “Human Factor in IT Security: How Employees are Making Businesses Vulnerable from Within”. With 46% of IT security incidents caused by employees each year globally, this business vulnerability must be addressed on many levels, not just through the IT security department.
Uninformed or careless employees are one of the most likely causes of a cybersecurity incident — second only to malware. While malware is becoming more and more sophisticated, the sad reality is that the evergreen human factor can pose an even greater danger.
In particular, employee carelessness is one of the biggest chinks in corporate cybersecurity armor when it comes to targeted attacks. While advanced hackers might always use custom-made malware and hi-tech techniques to plan a heist, they will likely start with exploiting the easiest entry point – human nature.
According to the research, 26% of targeted attacks on UAE businesses in the last year had phishing/social engineering at its source. For example, a careless accountant could easily open a malicious file disguised as an invoice from one of a company’s numerous contractors. This could shut down the entire organization’s infrastructure, making the accountant an unwitting accomplice to attackers.
“Cybercriminals often use employees as an entry point to get inside the corporate infrastructure. Phishing emails, weak passwords, fake calls from tech support – we’ve seen it all. Even an ordinary flash card dropped in the office parking lot or near the secretary’s desk could compromise the entire network — all you need is someone inside, who doesn’t know about, or pay attention to security, and that device could easily be connected to the network where it could reap havoc,” says David Jacoby, Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
Sophisticated targeted attacks do not happen to organisations every day – but conventional malware does strike at mass. Unfortunately though, the research also shows that even where malware is concerned, unaware and careless employees are also often involved, causing malware infections in 55% of incidents in the UAE.
Hide and seek
Staff hiding the incidents they have been involved in may lead to dramatic consequences, increasing the overall damage caused. Even one unreported event could indicate a much larger breach, and security teams need to be able to quickly identify the threats they are up against to choose the right mitigation tactics.
But staff would rather put organizations at risk than report a problem because they fear punishment, or are embarrassed that they are responsible for something going wrong. Some companies have introduced strict rules and impose extra responsibility on employees, instead of encouraging them to simply be vigilant and cooperative. This means that cyber protection not only lies in the realm of technology, but also in an organization’s culture and training. That’s where top management and HR need to get involved.
