Europe-wide survey reveals that corporations fail to protect against insider fraud, despite risks

Attachmate, a leading manufacturer of software solutions for terminal emulation, legacy modernisation, managed file transfer, and enterprise fraud management today released the results of a recent Europe-wide survey on enterprise fraud management, conducted late last year.

In the survey, 474 participants from various European companies and industries assessed the global and local risks for IT security and shared what is being done in their companies to address these issues.

Keenly aware of the increasingly sophisticated nature of white-collar crime, most companies recognise the global threats posed by hackers and insider fraud. In fact, when asked how many incidents they had observed in the past two years, most answered “more than ten”.

This high number of incidents was especially evident in France and the German-speaking countries. Commonly identified areas of risk included data transfer, identity management, and access management.

Sixty-eight percent of the survey participants said their companies were at risk for serious security breaches. That percentage increased in Germany, Scandinavia, and the Benelux countries, where 80% of the participants considered themselves at risk. Across-the-board, European companies agreed that security breaches would most likely consist of guideline manipulation, followed by the illicit passing on of critical business information. External hackers are regarded as the third-largest threat.

The survey results show that while companies are well aware of the risks of security shortfalls, many of them assume that their confidential data is well protected. This perception could have enormous repercussions and cause great harm to businesses - easily reaching millions of dollars in damages.

Survey participants listed unforeseen expenses as the main repercussion from security abuses. In second place, about half of those surveyed identified long-term damage to the corporate image. Legal implications came third.

Most participants (between 64% and 82%) indicated that in order to prevent the abuse of confidential information, it would be prudent to monitor relevant business systems and in-house users. However, it is difficult to effectively expose and stop one's own employees from engaging in criminal behaviour.

Luminet offers a solution for monitoring business systems. A powerful case detection system, Luminet lets organisations analyse user activities in real-time, record and play back user screens, and analyse suspicious computer-related behaviour. If required, Luminet can use data retrieved from application monitoring to provide legal evidence for security abuse.

For more information on Luminet, please visit: http://www.attachmate.com/Products/efm/efm.htm.

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"Insider fraud is more common than we think and without an appropriate solution it is very difficult to detect," said Stephan Sippel, Sales Manager, Security & Integration Solutions, Attachmate. “It has already happened from time to time that trusted employees with legal access to systems and applications as part of their daily job used their access rights to commit fraud. And it can be quite tricky for companies to differentiate between legal and illegal operations. Luminet provides companies the possibility to detect insider crimes."