by Angela Guess

According to a recent press release, “Varonis Systems, Inc., a pioneer in data security and analytics, today released a report revealing alarming insight into the prevalence and severity of overexposed and unprotected files and emails on corporate networks worldwide. Most notably, the study, Data Under Attack: 2018 Global Data Risk Report from the Varonis Data Lab, found that on average, 21% of a company’s folders were accessible to every employee, and 41% of companies had at least 1,000 sensitive files open to all employees. The report, based on analysis of Data Risk Assessments conducted by Varonis in 2017 for customers and potential customers on their file systems, shines a spotlight on several issues that put organizations at risk from data breaches, insider threats and crippling ransomware attacks, such as: Oversubscribed and global access groups giving far too many employees access to sensitive data; Unmanaged stale and sensitive data regulated by SOX, HIPAA, PCI, GDPR and other standards; Inconsistent and broken permissions that open security loopholes for hackers.”

The release goes on, “Findings from the report include: (1) 58% of organizations have more than 100,000 folders open to all employees. (2) 21% of folders were accessible to every employee. (3) 41% of organizations had at least 1,000 sensitive files open to all employees. (4) On average, 54% of an organization’s data was stale, which adds to storage costs and complicates data management. (5) On average, 34% of user accounts are enabled, but stale, “ghost” users who still have access to files and folders. (6) 46% of organizations had more than 1,000 users with passwords that never expire.”

Check out the infographic below. Read more at Globe Newswire.

Photo credit: Varonis