Government “Second Least Secure Sector”

Government is the second least secure sector when it comes to protecting information, accounting for 11% of all records lost or stolen from April to June this year, claims new research.

The SafeNet Breach Level Index (BLI) tracks and compares data breaches globally, rating them on several factors such as type of data, number of records stolen, the source of the breach and whether information was encrypted.

During the study, 237 breaches were recorded that compromised more than 175m customer records containing personal and financial information across the world.

Retail was the only industry to fare worse than government during Q2, with 83% of all records examined being breached within this sector.

According to the research, of all data losses recorded, less than 1% of these were secure breaches where strong encryption and authentication solutions were in place.

Customers Lose Confidence After Security Breaches

After the report, SafeNet decided to do a follow-up study which claims that consumers completely lose faith in a business once it suffers a data breach.

A survey of over 4500 adults across the world’s largest economies – US, UK, Germany, Japan and Australia – revealed 65% of participants would never or were very unlikely to do business again with a company who suggest a data breach involving financial data.

“Data breaches are not just breaches of security. They’re also breaches of trust between communities and their customers and can result in not only negative publicity but lost business, lawsuits and fines that can threaten the viability of business,” claimed Jason Hart, SafeNet vice president of Cloud Solutions.

“For organisations that fail to address their security vulnerabilities, the problem is only going to get worse as stricter regulations governing the reporting of data breaches are introduced across the world, making breaches more visible to the public.

“Companies need to all that they can to keep customer data protected,” he added.

© 24N.biz