Large Majority of Enterprise Employees Understand What Effective Security Practices Are, Few Practice Them Regularly, According to Dtex Systems YouGov Survey

47 Percent of Employees Say Security Is Someone Else’s Responsibility


San Jose, Feb. 01, 2019 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dtex Systems, the leader in user behavior intelligence and insider threat detection, today announced results of a new survey, Finding the Disconnect: Security Perceptions and Behaviors of Today’s Enterprise Employees. Conducted by global market research company YouGov, the survey data revealed cybersecurity attitudes and practices prevalent among US-based employees. Findings highlight security challenges they create and insights that security and risk professionals can use to reduce related risks. Top outcomes included:

  • 47% of employees believe that cyber and data security are someone else’s responsibility
  • 85% of employees say it’s important to update anti-virus software regularly, only 37% confirmed doing so within a 60-day period
  • 83% of employees say it’s important to shred confidential documents after use, only 41% confirmed doing so
  • 75% of employees say it’s important to use an encrypted file system, only 16% confirmed doing so
  • 71% say it’s important to change account passwords, only 42% confirmed doing so
  • 70% percent say it’s important to report suspicious behaviors, only 4% confirmed doing so
  • 69% say it’s important to use two-factor authentication, only 30 percent confirmed doing so
  • 68% say it’s important to move files to secure servers, only 14% confirmed doing so

“The results of this survey show that employees are becoming increasingly educated on how to help defend their workplaces against cyberattacks and data breaches. It also shows that most employees don’t feel responsible for helping their employers to reduce risk,” said Mohan Koo, Dtex co-founder and CTO. “Organizations must provide employees with more proactive and engaging security awareness and training opportunities that take advantage of ‘teachable moments’ as they happen. This is the only way to truly shift culture in an ongoing manner. To identify these moments, organizations must utilize technologies that provide real-time visibility over how employees are behaving and accessing and sharing data, while on and off networks.”

Access Finding the Disconnect: Security Perceptions and Behaviors of Today’s Enterprise Employees: https://www2.dtexsystems.com/finding-the-disconnect  

Methodology
Dtex, in partnership with market research firm YouGov, surveyed more than 1,000 public and private sector employees based in the US. The findings in this report represent the data collected from a subset of survey respondents — 755 full-time enterprise (non-government) employees.  

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About Dtex Systems

Dtex turns employees, executives, contractors and partners into trusted insiders. The award-winning Dtex Advanced User Behavior Intelligence Platform reduces insider threat risk by providing intelligence about behaviors and activities across massive numbers of distributed users. Dtex combines the largest library of known malicious and negligent behaviors, machine learning and advanced analytics. This gives the platform the power to detect insider threats in near real time, reduce false positives, and free security and risk professionals from having to spend time analyzing overwhelming volumes of data and logs. Dtex is scalable and deploys quickly. It only collects light-weight data needed to identify risky behaviors, which never slows network, endpoint or user performance. Patented anonymization capabilities protect privacy and ensure compliance. Investors include Wing Venture Capital and Norwest Venture partners. Customers include the world’s leading banks, manufacturers, healthcare organizations, government agencies, and law firms. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Williams Formula 1 Racing, and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer are among customers using Dtex to reduce insider threat risk. https://www.dtexsystems.com/

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RESPONSIBLE SECURITY BEHAVIOR: The enterprise employees surveyed appear to have a stronger level of understanding when we shift the conversation to responsible security behavior. More than 2/3 named habits such as using an encrypted file system, storing files on a secure server, and regularly changing passwords as such. Upwards of 80% view updating AV software and shredding confidential documents as important when it comes to keeping their organization safe. What then also comes into focus is a significant — and somewhat startling — gap in putting this awareness into practice. With just one exception (the changing of work passwords), less than half of respondents who deemed a security behavior important were able to confirm engaging in that same behavior in the previous 60 days. Less than 20% confirmed moving files to secure servers, using an encrypted file system, or reporting suspicious behavior in that same timeframe.

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