93% IT leaders claimed outbound email led to data breach in the last year

According to 2020 Outbound Email Data Breach Report, 93% of respondents – IT leaders – stated that outbound emails led to a data breach which occurred in the last year.

538 senior specialists mitigating security risks in the financial, healthcare, banking and legal sector took part in the survey.

A data breach happening due to an email is cyclic as it gets detected nearly twice a day on average as the surveyed noted.

The majority admitted to the rocketing number of emails since the COVID-19 outbreak. Almost 3/4 of respondents emphasise that the growth of risks to data safety coming from outbound email is strongly related to remote working issues.

Many managers still highlight human error as one of the major data breach reasons – 80% got attributed to “misdirection cause” (failing to send to a correct recipient), and wrong file attachment.

More than half of respondents – 62% – link outbound email data breaches to the fact that they are mostly reported by people apparently, not by a security system.