Over 60 Percent of Cybersecurity Professionals Say Insider Cyber Attacks are More Difficult to Detect Than External Cyber Attacks, Report Finds

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - Aug 15, 2017) -   Dtex Systems™, a leader in user behavior intelligence and insider threat detection, in partnership with Crowd Research Partners, today announced the release of its "2017 Threat Monitoring, Detection & Response Report," revealing that 48 percent of cybersecurity professionals rank detection and mitigation of insider threats as one of the top two challenges facing their organization's security teams today, highlighting growing concerns related to insider attacks specifically.

The report, based on results from a comprehensive online survey of over 400 cybersecurity professionals, was designed to gain more insight into the latest security threats faced by organizations and the solutions to detect, remediate and prevent them. Respondents ranged from technical executives to managers and IT security practitioners who represent organizations of varying sizes across many industries.

Survey responses reveal that despite being one of the longest-standing and most frequently leveraged vulnerabilities, the insider threat continues to thrive and grow within the enterprise -- with a majority of respondents (51 percent) saying they perceived a growth in insider threats over the last year. Key insider threat findings from the report include:

• Insider threats elude security teams. Sixty-one percent of all respondents say that it is more difficult to detect and prevent insider attacks than it is to prevent external attacks. Only six percent of respondents say that detecting external attacks is more difficult than identifying internal attacks.
• Careless employees are a top concern. Sixty-four percent of respondents cite an inadvertent data breach or compromise -- where an employee unknowingly causes an accidental breach -- as the top insider threat concern.
• Companies continue to struggle with BYOD and a blurred security perimeter. Over half of respondents (55 percent) highlighted an increasing number of devices with access to sensitive data linked to their networks as the top reason behind a rise in insider attacks over the last year. This was followed closely by data increasingly leaving the network perimeter via mobile devices and Web access (51 percent).
• Training is not enough to protect negligent users. User training was identified as the leading method for combating insider threats, according to 57 percent of those surveyed. However, only 30 percent of all respondents felt confident in their organization's insider threat security posture -- seven percent less than those who said they were confident in their organization's overall security posture. This points to a need for supplemental technology to protect an organization.

"As the threat landscape evolves, insiders continue to be the easiest target for hackers simply because humans are the most vulnerable part of an organization's security strategy. Businesses struggle to pinpoint effective ways to detect the exact moment an insider becomes a threat -- whether through negligence, credential theft or malicious intent," said Christy Wyatt, CEO at Dtex Systems. "Existing employee training protocols, malware detection tools, antivirus platforms and SIEMS alone lack context to reliably detect insider vulnerability. Advanced User Behavior Intelligence provides the critical visibility and context into user activity at scale to effectively detect insider threats before critical damage occurs, while protecting user privacy."

For additional details on how to best detect and mitigate today's most common security threats, download the "2017 Threat Monitoring, Detection & Response Report" here: https://dtexsystems.com/2017-threat-monitoring-detection-and-response-report/

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About Dtex Systems
Dtex Systems arms enterprises across the globe with revolutionary technology to protect against user threats, data breaches, and outsider infiltration. As the only solution combining unparalleled endpoint visibility with advanced analytics, Dtex is able to pinpoint threats with greater accuracy than traditional security methods without adversely impacting user productivity. To learn more, visit www.dtexsystems.com.