The Cost of Employee Carelessness

Updated 09/15/2019

Cybersecurity | IT and Business Operations

The Second Annual Study on the Cybersecurity Risk to Knowledge Assets, a survey of 630 security practitioners co-authored by Kilpatrick Townsend and Ponemon Institute found:

  • 65% believed that one or more pieces of their company’s intellectual property was in the hands of a competitor.
  • The most valuable knowledge assets, private communications, were the most difficult to secure and the least secured.
  • Costs to recover from security breaches rose sharply, from $5.4 million in 2016 to $6.8 million on average in 2017.
  • Employee carelessness is the most likely root cause of a breach. Click here to view the entire report

Social engineering uses deception and emotional manipulation to get your employees to divulge personal information or to take action, like clicking a link on an email that leads them to an infected website.

Falling for phishing emails, checking personal accounts on company computers, leaving passwords on post-it notes around the office, are just some of the ways your employees become your largest liability. Read our special report "Anatomy of a Phishing Email" to learn more on how you can protect yourself and your company.