Logblog: Protecting Against Data Theft

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Protecting Against Data Theft

We just completed a study in the UK that indicated that while 86 per cent of large UK financial services companies report that their enterprise data is mission critical, 76 per cent reveal that that they do not currently have systems in place to track and trace potential data theft. Of those companies who report having systems in place to monitor IT data, 57 per cent say it takes them several days to identify security breaches involving data theft and just 19 per cent report they are able to perform the appropriate forensics within one working day.

NetworkWorld also recently reported on the rise of data breach costs.

Companies spent nearly $5 million on average, and 30% more, this year than in 2005, to recover when corporate data was lost or stolen, according to a new study from the Poneman Institute.

The report states that “the average cost for each compromised record was up by more than 30% over last year, rising from $138 to $182″. In addition companies spend an average of $180,000 after the incident on remediation and preventive mesures for the future.

It also showed that the source of most compromises does not originate from corporate insideers, who only account for 6% of such data loss. The percentages break down to: