Protecting Sensitive Data

A report by the IT Policy Compliance Group looked at the leading causes for data loss. Human error accounts for 75% of these losses – half of these by user error, a quarter by policy violations. One in seven losses is due to laptops being lost or stolen.

Nearly 68% of 201 companies audited by the IT Policy Compliance Group are breaching data more than 6 times a year and 20% of companies are breaching data at least 22 times per year.

The survey found that those companies which considered security data the most highly had the least chance of breaching sensitive data – their priorities simply indicated a greater attention to security threats. Companies that prized financial data first, placing security data at a lower regard, had higher sensitive data losses.

They’re using everything but the kitchen sink to protect data, including Internet threat controls, network access controls, database access controls, IT asset management tracking and configuration management. – eWeek.com

The report examined the "real" cost to losing data. A company that has had to publicly report a data breach has had to pay 8% per customer to report the loss – $100 per customer on average – and an additional 8% is lost in revenue earned.

Not all companies, clearly, are taking security seriously enough. Priorities need to shift. Security and data breach prevention should be considered vital – customer data, employee data, financial data, and security data is all private, and every means possible to keep it that way will help prevent losses.

Tags: it policy compliance, itpcg, sensitive data, data loss, data breach, security, data security