OREANDA-NEWS. According to a joint study1 conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, 73% of companies have been affected by internal information security incidents, and the largest single cause of confidential data losses are employees (42%). The average damage caused by leaks in small and medium-sized businesses amounted to $80,000.

As a company’s IT infrastructure expands, so does the threat landscape. New components add new vulnerabilities. The situation is aggravated by the fact that not all employees – especially those with no specialist IT knowledge – can keep pace with a rapidly changing IT environment. As a result, the company is exposed to not only external threats but also internal threats that come from employees.

This was confirmed by a recent survey of businesses that found 21% of companies affected by internal threats lost valuable data that subsequently had an effect on their business.

It is worth mentioning that the study reported cases of accidental data leaks (28%) and intentional leaks of valuable company data (14%).

Average financial losses incurred by small and medium businesses as a result of data leaks amounted to $80,000 – $33,000 from accidental leaks and $47,000 from intentional leaks. The figures for enterprises were $1.29 million, $544,000 and $748,000 respectively.

In addition to data leaks, internal threats include the loss and theft of employees’ mobile devices. 19% of respondents confirmed that they lost a mobile device containing corporate data at least once a year.

Another important factor is that of staff fraud. 15% of those surveyed encountered situations when company resources, including finances, were used by employees for their own purposes. The percentage may be low, but the losses caused by these incidents exceeded the damage caused by confidential data leaks for enterprises. Small and medium businesses lose up to $40,000 on average from fraudulent activity by employees, while the figure for enterprises exceeds $1.3 million.

"It's no secret that a security solution alone is not enough to protect a company’s data. And the results of this study confirm that,” comments Konstantin Voronkov, Head of Endpoint Product Management, Kaspersky Lab. “What’s required is an integrated multi-level approach powered by security intelligence and other supplementary measures. These measures may include the use of specialized solutions and the introduction of security policies, such as restricting access rights."

Kaspersky Lab recommends that the issue of comprehensive security should not be neglected, as reliable multi-level protection can prevent a company from incurring additional costs not only from external but also internal security incidents. In particular, technology that protects against DDoS and phishing attacks, encryption, protection of mobile devices, virtual infrastructures and financial transactions all provide reliable targeted security for the individual nodes of a corporate IT infrastructure, and datacenters. And the implementation of various security policies together with specialist services such as incident investigations, independent evaluations of a company’s IT infrastructure and staff training will minimize the risk of threats.