News released today in a report from a leading cybersecurity firm which pertains to the fact that 64% of financial organisations have more than 1,000 sensitive files open to every employee, is a concerning indictment of the state of insider threat preparedness in the sector.
The report, which also stated that the average employee of a financial services firm has unrestricted freedom to view, copy, move and change data contained in 10 million files, doesn’t however come as a major surprise as our own recent research showed that the insider threat is grossly underestimated especially when you consider that the average cost of a data breach in the financial services sector is among the highest of any industry, at $5.85m.
The reality is that financial services organisations must shift the dial on insider risk and reduce breach frequency because the penalties for failing to do so are becoming increasingly draconian, and the repercussions from customers much more severe
One way to do this is through the implementation of data classification tools, which not only help organisations to protect their data by putting the appropriate security labels in place, but also help educate users to understand how to treat different types of data according to relevant levels of classification and sensitivity. Here at HelpSystems, our data classification solution enables users to classify both their emails and documents according to their sensitivity, using both visual and metadata labels. Once labelled, data can be controlled to ensure that emails, documents, and files are only sent to intended recipients, protecting your sensitive information from accidental loss.
