Insider threats worry IT

A survey of IT decision makers finds that 97% of respondents report they are "somewhat" or more vulnerable to insider threats compared to a year ago.

The survey, by Vormetric, which provides enterprise data security for physical, big data, public, private, and hybrid cloud environments, finds that 41% of U.S. financial services respondents have experienced a data breach or failed a compliance audit in the last 12 months.

Also, 63% of U.S. financial services respondents cited "privileged users" as the most dangerous insider threat—a full 20 percentage points above the second-highest category, "partners with internal access."

Security spending patterns

When asked about the top three IT security spending priorities:

• 57% of U.S. financial service respondents cited preventing a data breach incident—two and a half times more since 2013, which saw 21% of respondents citing it as spending priority.

• 43% cited protection of finances and other assets.

• 39% cited fulfilling compliance requirements and passing audits.

"Within the past three to five years, threats have changed dramatically and will continue to do so in the year ahead," says Andrew Kellett, lead analyst for Ovum and author of the 2015 Vormetric Insider Threat Report—Global Edition. "Vulnerable sectors like the retail and financial industries need to understand that compliance standards evolve too slowly to keep up with fast-moving threats, and even then ticking all the compliance boxes is no guarantee of safety. As a result, their continued confidence in these standards is curious."