Companies’ biggest cyber threat problem works in their own cubicles

New Hampshire Business Review held a “cybersecurity” forum recently (yes, that term is still used – I kind of like it, actually) that looks like it was pretty good, judging from the paper’s report on it (read it here). The headline gives the bad news: “Employees pose biggest cyber threat to employers.” That’s bad because it’s more fun to think attacks are due to Russian techno-punks rather than coworkers, because you can’t be blamed for the former.

The report says it’s not that employees deliberately screw over their companies, but that they click on the wrong thing or don’t follow security rules (because they’re a pain in the butt, as we all know), making a breach more possible: “The majority of data breaches happen by virtue of accident, mistake or misfortune instead of a malicious attack,” said Cameron Shilling, director of the Litigation Department and chair of Privacy and Data Security at McLane Middleton, in a panel discussion.

Much of breaches are phishing attacks, from employees clicking on a link in an email, said Benton, or ransomware that locks down a file or system, said Larry Cushing, vice president of sales engineering at DSCI.