14,000 Irish companies admit that there were sanctioned cases of compromising confidential information within their organizations.
DataSolutions published an account of incidents that resulted in a company losing control of sensitive information. Representatives of 14,000 companies took part in a survey, out of which more than 200 were IT directors.
Poll-takers figured the major breach in security systems to be the human factor. 63% said that in their organization, it might only be that employees sent an email with confidential information to the wrong person, or attached the wrong files. Out of them, 35% compromised their own personal data, and 28% compromised the data of their clients.
All poll-takers agreed with the opinion that checking on a worker's activities will become more complicated, considering the growth in the number of people who use mobile devices for business correspondence. 26% of responders admitted their companies had never carried out an audit of their information system, but they thought it a necessary measure in the business development and maintenance of their reputation in their clients' eyes.
The responders divided threats into internal and external. They saw the most dangerous external threat as spam containing requests to click on dangerous links. As for internal threats, the most dangerous are careless actions of employees, as reported by the analytic center InfoWatch.
Nikolai Fedotov, head InfoWatch analyst: “There's a law in Ireland that requires companies to report incidents with personal data. Therefore such leaks are often stopped. This survey allows us to estimate the number of such incidents that are not made known to the public.
In the US and Great Britain, one is supposed to inform the state organizations about leaks, as well as the public in some cases of personal data. Such occurrences are often published by the mass media. These admitted leaks lead to fines from the state and a damaged business reputation. It stimulates the acceptance of protection measures and for putting technological means of protection in place.”
