Data security policies not enforced, survey says
May 18, 2010 by Steve HannafordPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, Security
There’s a big gap between companies’ declared security policies and the day-to-day reality of protecting sensitive customer data.
That’s the conclusion of a recent survey conducted by consulting giant Accenture and the Ponemon Institute, a leading privacy research firm.
The survey reached out to 5,500 business leaders worldwide.
The good news is that most companies are well aware of the dangers and liability of having private data pilfered. In fact, 73% of the managers interviewed said that they had data privacy rules in place.
But here’s the bad news: 58% of the companies approached had at least one data security breach in the last year — that they knew of. And, of those companies, 60% admitted that they had had more than one such attack.
Other results of the survey:
- 81% said that it was OK to sell customer information to another company
- 46% thought customers had no right to control how information about them is used
- 45% either disagreed with or were unsure about giving customers the right to control what kind of information could be collected about them, and
- A majority said that they didn’t think setting limits on collecting customer information was important.
For most companies, one analyst notes, privacy policies are still “aspirational”, and not really backed up and enforced.
An article in Compliance Week magazine concludes that companies still don’t get the very real dangers that loss of consumer data can mean, dangers that get all the more likely as such growing factors as mobile computing, cloud computing and professional data theft grow.
The very real costs of such breaches are now being understood: the cost of notifying customers when a breach takes place, the loss of customer confidence and, increasingly, the cost of litigation as new laws are put in place.
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Tags: customer data, policies, privacy
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