According to Gurucul Survey One in Four Workers Would Steal Company Information to Secure Job at Competing Firm

Workplace Behavior Audit of Nearly 500 IT Security Pros at Blackhat USA 2019 Also Identified MSPs and Developers a Leading Source of Third Party Risk

Gurucul, a leader in behavior based security and fraud analytics technology for on-premises and the cloud, announced the results of a survey of workplace behavior conducted at Blackhat USA 2019.

@Gurucul survey of nearly 500 IT Pros on #workplacebehavior at #Blackhat USA 2019 finds 1 in 4 workers would steal company information to secure job at competitor

According to the 476 IT security professionals canvased, nearly one in four (24%) said they would take company information to help apply for a position at a competitor. The study also found that managed service providers or MSPs (34%) and developers (30%) pose the leading sources of third party risk, and that if someone was to commit fraud it would most likely occur in the finance department (32%).

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“What these findings show is that insider fraud is a top concern among IT security professionals, as are the security risks associated with third parties that have privileged access to corporate resources,” said Craig Cooper, COO from Gurucul. “Since detecting insider threats by employees and trusted third parties is the ultimate game of cat and mouse, many leading edge security organizations are using machine learning to compare the behavior of all users against established baselines of ‘normal’ activity. This allows them to identify anomalous events and spot outliers so they can remediate threats early on.”

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Key Findings

At the 2019 Blackhat USA Conference, Gurucul conducted a workplace behavior survey to better understand the risky behaviors that pose a security risk to organizations. 476 IT security professionals from around the world completed the questionnaire, of which, more than half work in organizations with at least 2,500 employees. Some of the reports highlights include:

● Nearly one in four people (24%) would take company information to help apply for a role at a competitor

● Nearly one third (32%) of IT security pros think that finance is the department most at risk for fraud

● Almost three fourths (74%) of respondents tightened up third-party access because of third-party breaches

● The third parties that most concern respondents are MSPs, followed by developers

● 44% of respondents spend at least one hour a day on non-work related web sites (including 32% of those in retail)

● The larger the organization, the more likely it is that workers will surf the web for fun while at work

● Browsing social media sites is the most popular non-work related online activity

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