INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Enterprise Security
BeyondTrust reveals
‘5 deadly sins’ increasing
the risk of data breach
BeyondTrust’s
annual survey,
Five Deadly Sins of
Privileged Access
Management, reveals
the attitudes and
actions responsible
for the contradiction
of IT organisations
struggling to secure
sensitive information
despite high levels of
awareness.
B
eyondTrust, the leading
cybersecurity company dedicated
to preventing privilege misuse
and stopping unauthorised access, has
announced its annual privileged access
management survey which identified
the ‘Five Deadly Sins of Privileged
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Access Management’, and how they
prevent organisations from effectively
protecting sensitive information. identifiable information (86%),
downtime of computing systems (85%),
and loss of intellectual property (80%).
For years, security experts have outlined
best practices for privileged access
management (PAM) in an effort to
reduce problems associated with the
abuse of privileged credentials. Despite
this, IT organisations continue to struggle
with privileged access management. Yet, despite these widespread concerns,
Forrester research finds that 80%
of data breaches are the result of
the abuse or misuse of privileged
credentials. The BeyondTrust survey
finds these ‘5 Deadly Sins of Privileged
Access Management’ are to blame for
this contradiction between the fact that
so many IT organisations struggle to
secure sensitive information despite
their high levels of awareness and
commitment to PAM:
To understand why, BeyondTrust
recently surveyed nearly 500 IT
professionals from around the world
with involvement in privileged access
management. Because so many attacks
start with the misuse of privileged
accounts, it is not surprising that
respondents rated the following three
security measures as somewhat to
extremely important to their efforts:
• Privileged access management (83%)
• Privileged session management (74%)
• Privileged elevation management (74%)
When asked what issues keep them
awake at night, respondents most
often cited the misuse of personally
1. Apathy: When asked to list
the top threats associated with
passwords, respondents listed
employees sharing passwords with
colleagues (79%), employees
not changing default passwords
their devices ship with (76%), and
using weak passwords like ‘12345’
(75%). Despite knowing better,
respondents admitted that many
of these same bad practices are
common within their organisation.
A third of the respondents report
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