Member Article

New Report Highlights Over-Subscribed Data Risk

A report has been released that reveals an alarming insight into the prevalence and severity of overexposed and unprotected files and emails on corporate networks worldwide.

Most notably, the Global Data Risk Report, found that on average, 21% of a company’s folders were accessible to every employee, and 41% of companies had at least 1,000 sensitive files open to all employees.

The report, based on analysis of Data Risk Assessments conducted by security firm Varonis in 2017 for customers and potential customers on their file systems, highlights several issues that put organisations at risk from data breaches, insider threats and crippling ransomware attacks.

The report also reveals that that 58% of organisations have more than 100,000 folders open to all employees and 21% of folders were accessible to every employee.

In addition ,on average, 54% of an organisation’s data was stale, which describes data that is no longer used or needed and can add to storage costs and complicates data management.

“It only takes one leaked sensitive file to cause a headline-making data breach,” said Varonis Technical Evangelist Brian Vecci. “And we’re seeing hundreds of thousands of exposed sensitive folders in our risk assessments.

He adds, “Executives and board members are starting to understand how much of their data is at risk, and they need to know these exposed folders can be fixed. We’ve seen how one unpatched server can lead to a disaster; a single “unpatched” folder can be just as disastrous, and it doesn’t take an expert or sophisticated code to exploit it.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BS .