Internet Security Learning Center

Survey: Organizations Not Doing Enough to Secure Data

Organizations are not doing enough to stop IT data breaches and the loss of sensitive data, concludes an Insight Advantage survey, which interviewed 359 executives in charge of security at large North American organizations. Ninety-four percent of respondents said they do not know how many email messages with private information left their organization every month and 80 percent reported experiencing information leaks via electronic devices such as BlackBerrys in the past year. Workshare's Dave McKee says 57 percent of companies do not even have a specific way to enforce data privacy and keep track of security policies. Only 6 percent responded that they had no information leaks. Small companies are not the only ones who lag behind when it comes to security: Several security breaches within federal agencies have led the government to force all agencies to encrypt sensitive data. Experts insist that encryption is not enough and that poor training and poor handling of data are the main reasons behind security breaches. "Immediate and pre-emptive user feedback, that is the critical element of the actual problem solution," says Peter Christy at Internet Research Group. Gartner says currently only 10 percent of organizations have reached a high level of IT security, and that number will likely only increase to 20 percent by 2008.

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