The results of a survey that Osterman Research did for FaceTime Communicators indicates that nearly 40% of IT staff surveyed believe that unintentional leaks by employees pose a bigger threat to data security than spyware or malware. 57% of those surveyed believe their corporate data is not adequately protected from leaks via IM / unified communications.


Graph via: FaceTime Communications

And concerned they should be - the latest data indicates that data breaches are rising in 2008, not declining.

The new survey from Osterman & FaceTime surveyed 109 mid-to-large IT organizations in North America. The task of the survey was to understand current concerns and plans about about leak prevention in communications technologies.

The survey also indicates that data security is a top priority for most companies (though not all, sadly). 48.6% of respondents consider information leak prevention for communication technologies like IM to be a top priority or to have existing plans in place to address security issues.

As Matt Hines of eweek states:

So the big picture here appears to be that most IT departments are still scared as hell that they’re missing something in the old email, IM and FTP server world. And with the threat of physical theft of devices or people literally walking out the door with printed sheets or disks seemingly existing as the only other big areas for theft, one could assume that it seems that they’re pretty much still scared of messaging-based data loss in general.

For more resources & news on IM security, read up here:

Via eweek, market wire Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

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