As per the report by Egress, 95% of cybersecurity experts believe company and client data in e-mails is at risk. Besides this, a massive 83% of firms have been targets of data breaches through these attacks in the last twelve months. Human error is the primary cause of almost a quarter of these incidents, around 24% caused by an empty who shared data by mistake. For instance, forwarding an email that consists of important information to the wrong recipient or sending a wrong attachment. The report enquired 500 IT leaders and 3000 work from home employees in the US and UK across various vertical sectors consisting financial sector, legal, and healthcare.
The downside of remote working
Work from home culture has left employees highly dependent on working with emails, especially using them for sharing sensitive data. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, 85% workforce has confirmed sending more emails. It has exposed the user to more risks and attacks involving outbound email data breaches.
The report also revealed that around 60% of team members work in an environment that is usually buzzing with distractions and noise. These generally include communal spaces and shared home offices.
Besides the problems related to confidentiality, these distractions that employees face in the work environment often lead to more risks of a data breach.
The risk is intensified more by work stress and fatigue, report shows around 73% of employees said that they feel low due to the pandemic. The blend of home and work life resulted in many employees working for long hours in an overwhelming environment, while both of these factors increasing the chances of a data breach.
Tony Pepper, CEO, Egress said "it's clear to see that legacy DLP tools are no longer fit for purpose; they’re difficult to use and because they can’t take people’s behavior into consideration, they’re limited in their ability to mitigate the rising tide of email data breaches in this new world of remote working. He further said, "employees continue to work in challenging environments, and the lines between work and home life have been blurred. All of this contributes to the likelihood that a costly mistake might be made."
