Companies can save anywhere from $100,000 to $2 million by proactively preventing a data breach or other insider attack, according to a recent industry survey.

The survey, published in early September as Insider Threat Awareness Month was kicking off, found that 61 percent of respondents reported at least one insider-related attack at their organizations in the last 12 months, with 22 percent reporting six or more incidents. That’s higher than previous surveys.

More than 30 percent of respondents said average costs were in the $100K to $2-million range. “Even when costs are less than $100K,” the report added, “they can add up quickly when multiple attacks occur.” Costs of an attack – whether by malicious or careless employees – can be attributed to lost revenues, legal fees, compliance penalties and brand/reputational damage.

Despite the increase in insider attacks, 73% of those surveyed also said their security budgets will be staying flat (57%) or decreasing (16%) next year.

Unfortunately, the report adds, half of the organizations will find defending against insider threats even more challenging “as the IT ecosystem evolves and organizations migrate to the cloud, shift to remote work and enable [bring your own device] policies.”

The 2020 Insider Threat Report was published by cloud security provider Bitglass, which is a technology partner of Haystax parent company Fishtech Group. Download the full report here.

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Note: Haystax goes beyond user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA) tools to provide a ‘whole-person’ view of workforce risk. Click here to find out how we use probabilistic modeling, machine learning and other AI techniques to analyze a wide array of network and non-network data sources and proactively identify the riskiest insiders – before they do harm.