EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

There has been a lot of talk about employees being the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. But a new survey shows that those with privileged network access are the prime targets.

TechRepublic reports that the survey, which questioned IT executives, security professionals, auditors, CIOs and CISOs, found that sysadmins were considered the largest threat within the privileged user network by 42% of IT workers; C-suite executives were named by 16% of respondents.

Interestingly, as Alison DeNisco Rayome writes, “Some 35% of IT professionals said they see themselves as the biggest internal security risk to their organizations’ networks,” according to the report.

IT and those in the C-suite essentially hold the keys to the kingdom, with much easier access to organizations’ most sensitive data. That makes them more desirable targets. According to Rayome, personal employee data was considered most valuable to hackers by 56 percent of respondents because it can easily be sold. That was followed by customer data (50 percent), and financial information (46 percent).

Nearly half of IT professionals pointed to time and location of login as the most important user data for spotting malicious activity.

Read the full story at TechRepublic.