A new study by Sila and Ponemon Institute found that 62% companies provide employees with user privileges they do not actually need in order to do their job. Moreover, 70% of North Americans believe that as a result of these shortcomings in privileged access management (PAM), employees in their organization are accessing sensitive information they don’t need to perform their duties. A majority of respondents think that this kind of abuse by privileged users will escalate over the next 1-2 years.
The survey found that in 30% of cases, companies fail to revoke privileged access after employees change roles. Another striking finding is that employees are often given their privileges for the wrong reasons, with the most common reason being that all users at the same level are given the same kind of privileged access, regardless of whether they need this or not.
Read more: Most expect the risk of privileged user abuse to increase