Microsoft recently released a new survey of 3,600 security, privacy and marketing professionals in the US, UK and Germany entitled “Microsoft Study on Data Protection and Role Collaboration Within Organizations”. The study indicates that poor collaboration leads to twice as many data breaches, and that the cost of data breaches is on the rise.

Key findings from the survey:

• 78% of respondents believe the marketing department informs security & privacy executives of its personal data collection initiatives; yet, only 30% of marketers actually do this
• Phishing for personal data went up 150%, Trojans for personal data went up 500% yet poor collaboration accounted for twice as many data breaches over the past 2 years
• 74% of respondents with poor inter-departmental collaboration suffered a data breach in the past 2 years
• 29% of respondents with good inter-departmental collaboration suffered a data breach in the past 2 years

Corporate units all think of protecting personal data in different ways. Marketers are concerned with reputation and trust; privacy experts with regulatory compliance; security professionals with protection from attacks. The different priorities, different reporting structures and lack of collaboration leads to trouble. Collaboration benefits the goals of all parties, but the disconnected reporting structures make collaboration difficult to achieve.

Many departments may assume that the IT department is securing all data, and thus feel they have little responsibility in data management.

Brendon Lynch, a privacy strategist with Microsoft, notes:

“It shows the need for better collaboration that accounts for the entire data lifecycle. You can’t just assume the IT security people are taking care of it all.”

There is no single solution for effective data protection collaboration, but awareness of the issue is the first step towards planning effective security policies.

Via eWeek.com & search security Tags: data security, collaboration, it security, data breach