DCN December 2016 | Page 12

centre of attention

CULTURE CLASH

Owen Ashby of Cognisco looks at how employees ’ attitudes and behaviours towards security could potentially be putting organisations at risk .

The link between human error and security breaches and outages in the data centre industry has been a hot topic of debate in recent months .

Research earlier this year from Egress Software Technologies found that 66 per cent of the businesses it surveyed reported an increase in data breaches , with human error accounting for 62 per cent of those attacks . Other reports suggest that 30 per cent of cyber breaches are caused by negligence or mistakes . This has got us thinking about how to mitigate people risk in data centres . There is clearly a link between human error and data breach issues , but we think the problem goes far deeper than basic human error . Is the real issue the accepted behaviours and embedded culture within organisations and people ’ s attitudes towards security processes ?
When faced with security breaches , organisations generally take action . They tend to refine and optimise their processes , they invest in more training for staff , enhance their infrastructure and they tighten their security protocols . Whilst these are all good measures , they are unlikely to solve the underlying issues if the attitudes of employees towards security remain the same .
Mulling this further , we invited three leading experts from the data centre industry – Paul Bevan from Cassini Reviews , Sarah Parks , director of marketing at CNet Training and Dr Theresa Simpkin from Anglia
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