Why senior managers are the most dangerous negligent insiders

Hardly a day goes by that there isn’t news of another vulnerability, another attack, another patch — and often the biggest, baddest of its kind.

You’d think we’d all be on hyper alert, but that is far from the case.

Instead, pleas for compliance with data security basics fall on deaf ears. Here’s why: employees, including senior managers and business owners, don’t assume personal responsibility for security.

Consider this: 43 percent of C-level executives say negligent insiders are the greatest risk to sensitive data in their organizations, according to data cited in this infographic compiled by the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Online Master of Science in Management Information Systems program. Yet, senior managers are twice as likely workers overall to take files with them after leaving a job. And 58 percent of senior managers (compared to 25 percent of all workers) have accidentally sent sensitive information to the wrong person.