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Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0154 Datagate: The Next Inevitable Corporate Disaster?:
A McAfee report of the above titel reveals a widespread belief that a major security breach, even an unintentional one, could lead to the collapse of a major corporation. The global research, conducted for McAfee by Datamonitor, surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals at companies with at least 250 employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Australia. 33% of respondents said they believe a major data loss incident involving accidental or malicious distribution of confidential data could put them out of business. The research also suggests that while awareness regarding the danger of breaches is high, the problem continues to grow. 60% of respondents said they had experienced a data breach in the past year, only only 6% of respondents could say with certainty that they had not experienced one in the previous two years. However, despite the prevalence of breaches, enterprises are still devoting just a small fraction of their IT budgets to the problem. On average, respondents spend just one-half of 1% of their overall IT budgets on data security. Additional key findings from the research include:
- A data breach that exposed personal information would cost companies an average of $268,000 to inform their customers - even if the lost data is never used.
- Nearly half (46%) of respondents do not debrief or monitor their employees after they have given notice that they are leaving the company.
- Some 23% of respondents were able to estimate the total annual cost of data leakage, and the average figure they gave was $1.82 Million.
- Respondents rated loss of intellectual property and financial information as the two most valuable classes of data - with the average estimated cost of leaked financial data reaching $1.68 Million.
(www.hardwarzone.com 25APR07)
Last Modified: Sunday, 29-Apr-2007 15:56:48 EDT