Irvine, CA, May 12, 2020

Data sharing in the cloud puts education sector at risk of data breaches

Netwrix survey reveals that employees at 54% of educational organizations use cloud applications to share sensitive data outside of IT control and knowledge.

Netwrix, a cybersecurity vendor that makes data security easy, today announced additional findings from its 2020 Data Risk & Security Report. The report reveals that many educational organizations are at risk of data security incidents during the current period of working from home and virtual learning.

According to the survey, even before the lockdown, the majority of educational organizations had weak data security controls. In particular, 54% of IT professionals in the educational sector confessed that employees put data at risk by sharing it via cloud apps outside of IT knowledge. This is the highest percentage among all verticals surveyed. The move to distance learning increases this risk even more.

Other notable findings of the report include:

  • 82% of educational organizations don’t track data sharing at all or do it manually, and 50% of them suffered a data breach due to unauthorized data sharing last year.
  • 63% of educational organizations don’t review permissions regularly, and 24% of system administrators admitted to granting direct access rights upon user request.
  • 28% of respondents discovered data outside of secure locations, which is the highest number of all industries surveyed. This data was left exposed for days (40%) or months (33%).
  • Only 8% of respondents have developed cybersecurity and risk KPIs to evaluate their security posture and track success.

Distance learning creates many challenges for educational organizations, and cybersecurity is often taking a back seat to operational resilience. The Netwrix survey shows that security processes were not ideal before the pandemic, leaving these institutions even more vulnerable to the growing number of cyber threats today. To ensure these institutions can secure their student and employee data, IT professionals need to get back to basics. First, they need to understand what sensitive data they have, and classify it by its level of sensitivity and value to the organization. Second, they need to ensure that the data is stored securely, prioritizing the most important data. And last, they need to adopt healthy security practices for granting permissions in order to avoid data overexposure.
Steve Dickson, CEO at Netwrix.

To get the complete findings of the 2020 Netwrix Data Risk & Security Report, please visit: https://www.netwrix.com/2020datariskandsecurityreport.html

about netwrix corporation

Netwrix is reinventing data security based on the premise that data security and identity security cannot work in isolation. The Netwrix 1Secure platform provides security teams with clear visibility into who has access to sensitive information, enabling them to safeguard those identities, strengthen data protection, and stay ahead of evolving threats. Netwrix offers a comprehensive set of solutions that protect identities and data for over 13,500 organizations globally. Netwrix AI and flexible deployment options make it easier, faster, and more economical than ever for security teams to investigate and remediate threats. Netwrix: Data security that starts with identity.

For more information, visit www.netwrix.com.

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