Employees, vendors threaten corporate data.

• Position: INFO SECURITY

A global survey of 347 corporate privacy professionals identifies employees and vendors as two huge sources of risk that corporations are failing to manage properly.

Conducted by Bloomberg Law and the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), the survey "Assessing and Mitigating Privacy Risk Starts at the Top" reveals key threats to a company's data security and highlights the importance of corporate buy-in to mitigating the risk of a data breach.

While 55% of respondents said they consider their corporation's performance relating to privacy and risk as excellent or almost excellent, they were less confident in how they specifically address some of the most critical privacy issues. Only 35% rated their company's employee monitoring program excellent, and only 30% gave the same rating to their vendor management program.

While insider risk frequently is attributed to disgruntled employees, the findings of the survey point to lack of education as a much bigger cause. If employees are not correctly educated in their responsibilities, it can be easy for them to mishandle private data.

David Perla, president of Bloomberg Law, said, "One thing that jumped out at me is the...