Insider Threats: The Disconnect Between Cybersecurity Threats and the Actual Risk Posed by Malicious Insiders

Executive Summary – Cybersecurity Threats

Following the pandemic has offered bad actors a new opportunity to wreak havoc on corporate security protocols. Targeted cyber threats have steadily increased in the last 18 months and are expected to continue throughout the remainder of 2022. Although phishing is the number one initial attack vector for cybercriminals, executives surveyed were most concerned about the impact of insider threats on their organizations.

Constella Intelligence and Pulse surveyed 100 global cybersecurity leaders within enterprise organizations to find out what types of threats their organizations have been exposed to, how they are combating them and what they intend to do to safeguard their organization from cyberthreats in the future.

The key findings and insights communicated in this survey report serve as an informative and educational overview of the behaviors and experiences of cybersecurity leaders across industries and geographies. Additionally, this report offers insight into how they are dealing with an increase in cyberattacks, partially driven by remote work as a result of the pandemic, and how leaders are responding to this challenge.

Key Takeaway

Global executives in major industries – including financial services, software, and healthcare – across North America and EMEA – ranked malicious insiders as the greatest threat vector of concern (34%), even though they are rarely the cause of the most damaging cyberattacks. According to the survey, while malicious insiders actually accounted for only 7% of the most damaging attacks in 2021, more than one in three executives ranked them as the #1 attack vector of concern, followed by phishing and software vulnerabilities.

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