Although we often think of the malicious data hacker as the “boogey man” of data breaches, more breaches can be attributed to benign sources than to criminal activity. According to the 2014 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Analysis, from the Ponemon Institute, (sponsored by IBM) the second largest source of data breaches (30)% is human error, meaning contractors and employees whose errors resulted in exposure of confidential information.
How do businesses guard against this: like everything else, they plan. This is includes training (obviously) and also creating systems infrastructures that limit the damage a single employee or group can do. Employees can’t compromise what they can’t access, yet, businesses that fail to plan often give employees broader access than they need to do their jobs and risk exacerbating exposure.
