Two in three employees spread secret information outside the company

Some 69 percent of respondents in a recent survey admitted using file-sharing software to share sensitive information with someone outside of their organization, while 40 percent have retained access to sensitive data after leaving a job.

When ranking the top priorities of employees at their organization, productivity ranked highest, with 48 percent of respondents choosing it as the top concern, followed by convenience (28 percent) and security (17 percent). 40 percent of respondents reported that C-suite executives posed the most serious risk to information security. Finance departments are most likely to share sensitive information across and outside the organization (23 percent) followed by sales (20 percent) and engineering (15 percent).

Negligent or careless employees who don’t follow security policies are the biggest threat to endpoint security in organizations, as HOTforSecurity previously noted. One in five employees would sell private passwords to a third-party organization and 44% would do so for less than $1,000, while some would sell their corporate credentials for less than $100.

Here is an useful guide on how to mitigate human risks inside an organization.

The survey polled over 100 healthcare, financial services and manufacturing IT professionals.