Data Snapshot

Internal Incidents Cause Roughly A Quarter Of Breaches, With More Than Half Intentional

July 28th, 2023
With contributors:
Amy DeMartine , Danielle Chittem , Peter Harrison

Insider risk is an ongoing concern for many organizations today. Common consequences include fraud, privacy abuses, intellectual property theft, or damage to infrastructure. Twenty-six percent of security breaches in the past 12 months were caused by an internal incident, according to Forrester’s 2022 data on security decision-makers who experienced a breach and are aware of the cause. About a third who experienced an internal incident described it as accidental, but 44% blamed malicious intent, and 23% noted a mix of both inadvertent misuse and malicious intent. Organizations must carefully build insider risk management programs that account for employee privacy and due process.

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