INSECURE BEHAVIOUR HITS PRODUCTIVITY FIRST
There ’ s no doubt that cyberbreaches and attacks can have serious consequences . Brian Chappell , Senior Director , Enterprise and Solution Architecture , BeyondTrust says that along with plenty of technical solutions , the first and best line of defence is always the workforce .
Brian Chappell , Senior Director , Enterprise and Solution Architecture , BeyondTrust orget the common
F sense that goes into maintaining a high level of cyberhygiene , forget about how much money you ’ ve already spent on security , forget about the cost of mitigating a data breach and forget about the ethical points of keeping private data private . Forget about the legal ones too , for that matter .
Just think about productivity and just how much lag your workplace could really afford if suddenly , your business was to grind to a halt .
Our annual Privileged Access Management survey , which surveyed nearly 500 IT professionals between May and June 2017 , showed that the large majority , 66 %, suffer losses of productivity as a direct result of poor security practices .
Those productivity losses , our survey also found , caused organisations an average loss of US $ 4.2 million .
That wasn ' t the only outcome – 23 % of respondents mentioned harm to reputation as an impact and 21 % said they had been subject to legal or compliance penalties . A small amount said they had to deal with criminal prosecution too .
Still , this should come as a vindication of what security professionals have always known – that good cybersecurity practice does not hinder productivity . Ultimately , it enables it .
A whaling scam can send workers running up and down the office , looking to fulfil the demands of someone they believe to be their boss while an insider theft can prompt a lengthy , cumbersome security audit and a regular old network breach can switch staff priority to damage control instead of their normal duties .
But the best example is ransomware , the preeminent cyberthreat to individuals and businesses globally . Were an employee , or even your boss , to absent mindedly click on a phishing link , you may soon find yourself looking down the barrel end of an encrypted network , paralysed business and thousands , if
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