Nine in ten organisations around the world now feel they are vulnerable to insider threat, according to a survey by the security vendor Vormetric, almost double the figure from the end of 2013.
A third even said they felt "very or extremely vulnerable" to a hack or data leak from the inside of their organisation, which can often be hard to counter-attack because workers have privileged access to systems.
Tina Stewart, VP of marketing at Vormetric, said: "The insider threat landscape is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with as insiders move beyond employees who have access to corporate data."
"Add to the mix business partners, suppliers, contractors and third-party service providers who have access to your network or cloud resources (including privileged access in many cases) – suddenly security requires a completely different formula."
Awareness of insider threat has risen since the leaks by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, though Stewart pointed out that threats posed by employees can be considerably more modest.
"Offenders can range from malicious to accidental (sometimes it is as simple as clicking a link) that put data at risk," she said. "As [the attack on] Sony demonstrated, protecting data is not to be taken lightly."
More than half of those surveyed said that privileged users pose the greatest threat to the digital integrity of their firms, and 40% also reported that they had experienced a breach or failed a data related audit during the last year.
