Cyber Security: Essential Principles to Secure Your Organisation

CHAPTER 4: HUMAN THREATS

Some of the biggest threats to cyber security come not from technology, but from the people who use it. According to a 2019 report by Verizon, 34% of security incidents (out of 41,686 analysed) were attributable to internal actors.¹⁴

Most insider threats are not actively or deliberately malicious. In fact, most of the time, cyber incidents that are traced to insiders are simple mistakes that anyone could make, like being tricked by a cloned email. A 2018 report by Ponemon Institute that surveyed more than 3,000 insider incidents attributed only 23% of them to criminal and malicious insiders.¹⁵

Protecting against human threats requires training: employees need to know how to identify and respond to phishing emails and ...