Preempt Survey Reveals Poor Security Habits by Employees Posing Major Workplace Risks

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 16, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Preempt, a leader in adaptive threat prevention that helps enterprises eliminate insider threats and security breaches, today announced findings from a survey of more than 200 employees (management level or above) from enterprise companies of 1000 or more people, which found that businesses are left exposed by employees who have more access to sensitive resources than they should and who follow poor security practices. Questions from the survey included subjects such as employee password habits, exposure of personal credentials and bending the rules to access restricted data.

Results from the survey concluded that employees have more access than they should, and a large majority of them have poor security habits even when they think they don't. According to the findings, 25 percent of employees have tried to access data at work that they weren't supposed to, of which 60 percent were successful at accessing that data. In addition, with nearly 41 percent of employees using the same password for both personal and work accounts, and 20 percent of employees aware that their passwords were compromised in a breach, it is concerning to find that 63 percent claim they only changed their passwords for the account that was breached, proving they are not aware of the full consequences of a password leak.

"Uncontrolled employee access combined with poor security habits are a recipe for a breach no matter how you look at it," said Ajit Sancheti, co-founder and CEO at Preempt. "With the billions of dollars being spent each year on cybersecurity, it's concerning to discover how easy it is for over-confident employees to access data or bend the rules and negate the impact of those significant security investments."  

Additional findings from the survey, include:

• 40 percent of respondents had no clue if their usernames and passwords were exposed in a public breach or not.
• More than 90 percent of all employees have weak password update practices, split almost equally between those who use multiple variations of the same passwords (changing a letter, character, etc.) and those who pick something very different or more complex but write it down.
• Nearly 25 percent of respondents claim that there are accounts in their office or group where multiple users share a username and password – posing a threat to the company should a disgruntled employee leave and passwords are left the same.
• More than 30 percent of respondents have at some point "bent the rules" or found a security workaround in order to get something done at work – with more than 10 percent of respondents having done so on multiple occasions or regularly.
• 41 percent of employees rate themselves in the top 25 percent in their organization when it comes to security/health awareness proving a large portion of employees think they are much more security aware than they really are.

To view the full report of the survey findings, please visit https://www.preempt.com/white-paper/recipe-for-a-breach/.

In concurrence with the release of its survey results on employee security habits, Preempt is also announcing a new release of Preempt Inspector, a free and powerful application that quickly assesses an organization's password health, (including exposure to high profile security breaches) and provides actionable results to reduce a company's risk of a credential-based attack. This tool is a first step for organizations looking to combat threats from employees.

"At Preempt, we are doing our part to combat this common issue among employees by providing security pros with our free Preempt Inspector tool to assess password health of the enterprise and get on a best practice track to improve security posture," added Sancheti.

To download the free Preempt Inspector tool, please visit http://inspector.preempt.com. To learn more about Preempt and its solutions, please visit www.preempt.com.

Additional Report Resources:

• Infographic: https://www.preempt.com/wp-content/uploads/RecipeForBreach-Infographic.pdf
• Blog:  https://blog.preempt.com/study-finds-employee-security-habits-reveal-risky-imbalance

About Preempt
Preempt protects organizations by eliminating insider threats and security breaches. Threats are not black or white and the Preempt Platform is the only solution that delivers adaptive threat prevention that continuously preempts threats based on identity, behavior and risk. This ensures that both security threats and risky employee activities are responded to with the right level of security at the right time. The platform easily scales to provide comprehensive identity based protection across organizations of any size. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, CA. Learn more about us at www.preempt.com.

For further information, please contact:
Jacqueline Velasco
Lumina Communications for Preempt
T: 408-680-0564
E: [email protected]

SOURCE Preempt

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http://www.preempt.com