Bromium, Inc., Cupertino, Calif., released new research that found security professionals admit to knowingly circumventing security protocols and hiding discovered breaches. Bromium surveyed a subsequent group of security professionals in the United States and UK.

Results include:

• On average, 10% of security professionals admitted to paying a ransom or hiding a breach without alerting their team. For context, there were 638 million ransomware attacks in 2016, suggesting that tens of millions of these attacks are potentially not being disclosed.
• On average, 35% of security professionals admitted to going around, turning off or bypassing their corporate security settings.

“While we expect employees to find workarounds to corporate security, we don’t expect it from the very people overseeing the operation,” says Simon Crosby, co-founder and CTO. “Security professionals go to great lengths to protect their companies, but to learn that their decisions don’t protect the business is frankly rather shocking. To find from their own admission that security pros have actually paid ransoms or hidden breaches speaks to the human-factor in cyber security. It’s one reason we pursued virtualization-based security; it takes the burden off the end-user and ensures IT and security teams protect their business assets and data.”