Fifty-six percent of respondents said insider leaks have become more frequent in the past year.

Seventy-one percent said they’re most concerned about inadvertent leaks resulting from the use of unsanctioned apps, unintended external sharing, and unsecured mobile devices. Sixty-eight percent are concerned about leaks resulting from negligence, and 61 percent are concerned about leaks caused by malicious insiders.

Privileged users are seen as posing the greatest security risk to 60 percent of organizations, more than any other user group.

Respondents said a lack of employee training (62 percent), insufficient data protection solutions (57 percent), an increase in the number of devices with access to sensitive data (54 percent), and more data leaving the network perimeter (48 percent) are key to many insider leaks.

“Adoption of cloud and BYOD are positive developments, but organizations that have limited cross-app visibility will struggle to detect anomalous behavior and need to rethink their approach to data security,” Bitglass CEO Nat Kausik said in a statement. “The reality is that cloud apps have made data more readily accessible and insider threats more prominent — it’s up to the enterprise to put adequate data controls and policies in place to secure vital data.”

Collaboration tools (44 percent) and cloud storage apps (39 percent) are seen as the most vulnerable to insider threats.

Twenty-three percent of respondents said it takes them a month or longer to identify an insider breach, while 64 percent can detect an insider breach within a week. Sixty-six percent said preventing insider threats is more difficult than protecting against external threats.

A separate RedOwl survey of 281 attendees at Black Hat 2016 found that 47 percent of respondents said their organization had experienced an insider incident of some kind in the past year.

When asked who in their organization is interested in mitigating insider threats, responses included security and IT teams (32 percent), executives (24 percent), board of directors (18 percent), human resources (12 percent), and average employees (12 percent).

And when asked what the impact of insider incidents is, responses included reputation/brand damage (30 percent), IP loss (20 percent), financial loss (18 percent), negative cultural impact (17 percent), and legal repercussions (15 percent).

Recent eSecurity Planet articles looked at 5 ways to defuse the data threat from departing employees, and 3 ways to mitigate insider security risks.