Egress Launches Industry’s First Insider Breach Calculator for Email, to Help Business Quantify Risk

By STS News Desk On Oct 7, 2019

Egress Launches Industry’s First Insider Breach Calculator for Email, to Help Business Quantify Risk

Online Tool Calculates the Likelihood of Suffering an Email-Based Insider Data Breach as Employees Share Information

Egress, the leading provider of people-centric data security solutions, announced the launch of its new online Insider Breach Calculator aimed at helping businesses better determine the probability of suffering an email-based insider data breach.

The unique tool is based on an algorithm that considers the number of employee mailboxes within an organisation, its market sector, and the perceived level of stress and tiredness that employees experience, to calculate the figure.

This data is sourced from insights from sample organisations to determine the average number of emails sent on a daily basis and the overall security posture of the sector in which they operate.

Egress’ Insider Breach Calculator analyses the data further, breaking down whether a breach is likely to be the result of either accidental or malicious email behaviour. Utilising data taken from the 2019 Insider Breach survey, Egress can also calculate the probability of how these breaches are occurring, e.g. the predicted number of employees leaking data to a competitor or taking IP to a new job.

“Every organisation knows that it is leaking data in one way or another, yet we find there is a bit of a ‘head-in-the-sand’ mentality where the insider breach is concerned,” comments Neil Larkins, Egress CTO. “With an average of 60 emails sent every day by one individual within an organisation, the chances of employees accidentally leaking data, continues to grow exponentially. This is before we even consider intentional and malicious leaks, as well as ‘forced errors’ caused by sophisticated phishing attacks.”

The launch of Egress’ Insider Breach Calculator consolidates its position as a thought leader in assessing why insider breaches are so frequent. Its recent Freedom of Information request to the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office revealed that 60% of all personal data breaches reported in the first six months of 2019 were due to human error.

Furthermore, Egress’ 2019 Insider Data Breach survey revealed that 95% of IT leaders were concerned about the insider threat, with 79% of IT leaders believing employees have accidentally put sensitive company data at risk in the last year.

“The Insider Breach Calculator gives business leaders an indication of the chance of this happening to their organisation, helping them to identify the areas specific to email that require their attention to mitigate such risks,” concludes Larkins.