More than 45 per cent of organisations in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region are ill-equipped to cope with the threat of malicious insiders, according to a new report by Mimecast Limited, a leading email and data security company.

Meanwhile about 90 per cent have called malicious insiders a major threat to the organisations’ security, said the report.

Mimecast initially found as part of its Business Email Threat Report: Email Security Uncovered that 65 per cent of IT security decision makers globally feel their email security systems are inadequately equipped to handle cyber threats; and, this new data makes it clear that malicious insiders represent a major and growing source of this risk and anxiety over security preparedness.

By concentrating predominately on perimeter defence and outside threats, organisations around the world struggle with the risk that comes from their own people, emphasising the need for organisations to implement employee awareness and education as well as creating a cyber resilience strategy that includes both technology- and human-based defences, stated the data securityu  company.

This is evident especially considering this study revealed that nearly half of the organizations polled felt exposed to malicious insider attacks, it added.

Mimecast’s research also uncovered that:
•Over half (53 percent) of IT security decision makers view malicious insiders as a moderate or high threat to their organization.
•One in seven IT security decision makers view malicious insiders as their number one threat.
•Those who say they’re very equipped on cybersecurity feel virtually just as vulnerable to insider threats as those who believe they aren’t equipped at all (16 per cent vs. 17 per cent), indicating that the risk of malicious insiders trumps perceptions of security confidence.  

“Organizations of all sizes struggle with the risks that are posed by employees being targeted by adversaries to launch and execute attacks to gain access to data or funds,” said Brandon Bekker, managing director, Mimecast MEA.

"Every day, we trust employees with sensitive information and powerful tools, but we don’t give them the effective security education and advanced cloud security solutions that goes hand-in-hand with those responsibilities," stated Brekker.

As a community we must work together to enact better business processes. This is in part why we launched the Cyber Resilience Coalition, bringing together leading security, data protection and business continuity vendors to help strengthen organizations’ total cyber resilience strategy.

"Another issue we can work together to control is rogue employees who use file-sharing or cloud storage services to steal valuable corporate data – also known as malicious insiders. IT managers have, for too long, not paid due attention to this threat. We must re-evaluate unrestricted access to these services and ensure that other protections are put in place quickly," he added.-TradeArabia News Service