Just four months into 2011 and we’ve already seen some of the largest data breaches ever, be it the Epislon data breach or Texas breach. This however, doesn’t seem to be an end to data breaches. Large number of enterprises across the world are the brink of a data breach, according to a report from Courion Corporation. The survey report unearths the level of understanding enterprises have regarding IT risk management and user access.
The global survey of more than 1,250 IT decision makers at large enterprises found that one third (33 percent) of respondents do not believe their organizations have an accurate assessment of the level of IT risk they face from internal and external threats. This lack of confidence in risk assessment is warranted for two reasons. First, nearly one in four companies (23 percent) indicated that they do not have a formal IT risk management program in place. Second, a large percentage of businesses do not routinely review user access rights to data. More than 90 percent of respondents said that identification of user access is a core component of their IT risk management strategy, yet 60 percent said they only review individual user access or entitlements once a year or less frequently, with 45 percent saying they do not certify user access to high-risk applications on a regular basis. All of this creates serious data breach risks from excessive user rights, access creep (an accumulation of access credentials as an employee transitions through different positions within a company), and inappropriate access by privileged users within the organization. Many organizations discover alarming facts when they conduct user access reviews:
• Nearly half (48 percent) of companies have discovered excessive user rights within their systems;
• 39 percent of respondents say they have identified instances of inappropriate access by privileged users within their organizations;
• 56 percent say they found cases where access was still active for a user’s prior role.
“The results of this survey indicate that there is still widespread misunderstanding of the impact user access reviews have on enterprise IT risk,” said Kurt Johnson, vice president of strategy and corporate development for Courion. “No company wants to suffer the brand damage and liability caused by data breaches. The first step in preventing this is to establish a risk management strategy, and make user access reviews a key part of that process. Too often, an organization’s most highly sensitive data is easily accessible by numerous individuals who do not require access in the first place.”
Infosec India 