SailPoint’s latest survey says bad cybersecurity practises are putting firms at risk

As part of Cybersecurity Awareness month, SailPoint ran a survey between 400 IT professionals regarding five ‘what if?’ scenarios that could have a major impact on cybersecurity

65% of people surveyed said they are “really worried” about the potential for their digital identities to be stolen, though SailPoint found a telling dissonance between professionals’ concerns and the steps they may, or may not, be taking to mitigate risk.

The survey found that 20% of respondents use the same passwords for both their professional and personal accounts, and 13% would share their passwords with a colleague.

SailPoint says the risk this creates speaks for itself, but adds that it is magnified when related back to the fact the responses came from IT professionals who are likely to have far more access to company systems than most.

“The doors these habits open for malicious actors to get in are numerous, and once they are in, the potential for the domino effect to occur is very likely,” it said.

“Your password should not be a skeleton key for your digital life.”

See more:

• MOBI Grand Challenge to discover the use of blockchain in autonomous vehicles 
• London to host Google Next 18 cloud exhibition
• KeyBank to incorporate Kubernetes into digital transformation strategy

While poor password hygiene’s risks may not be particularly surprising, SailPoint made a more alarming discovery through its survey.

SailPoint asked: if you were to happen on a boss’s sticky note of passwords, would you take it? 

10% of respondents said they would, “which is concerning since they know the damage that could be done with those passwords,” SailPoint said. 

It pointed out that managers and other high-level people are likely to have access to a firm’s most sensitive data, such as customer contact lists which are often a hacker’s top target.

In addition, 16% said they would email sensitive company data to a personal account, while 20% said they would share their building access badge with someone.

It is clear from SailPoint’s survey that, even among IT professionals, there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to building smart, risk-reducing cybersecurity practises in the digital age.