Internal staff still pose the biggest security risk

IT security professionals still fear their own organisation's staff the most when it comes to data breaches.

At last month's Infosecurity show in London 300 attendees were polled about their data breach fears, and 71 percent said their own staff posed the biggest threat to their data.

This far outweighed that of hackers (28 percent), consultants and other third parties (seven percent), and just five percent cited domestic or foreign government agencies.

When it came to government snooping the Chinese government was the most feared, with the US and Russian governments well behind, and UK government slightly behind those two.

When looking at ways to improve security, 83 percent believed the open source community could collaborate better.

Barmak Meftah, CEO of open source data protection systems firm AlienVault, which did the survey, said: "We recognise that the way to beat the hackers is to facilitate collaboration among all members of the security community.

"But the talents and inputs of the open source community in particular are critical. They are on the front line of innovation and represent an incredibly diverse universe of organisations and geographies."

The UK needs more young people entering the IT security profession if it is to avoid a skills shortage in the near future, according to the government’s special representative to business for cyber security.

“There are far too many people over 40 working in this area and not nearly enough in their twenties,” Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones told delegates at the ITEC conference in London last week.

In response, one ComputerworldUK reader said: "Sorry Baroness Neville-Jones (72) it's time for you to be replaced because there are 'not nearly enough in their twenties' on the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee."