The Crown Records Management/Censuswide Survey of IT decision makers at UK companies with more than 200 employees revealed some shocking results overall as companies battle to keep information safe.
Data breaches are already big news following a cyber-attack on Carphone Warehouse which put the personal information of up to 2.4m customers at risk – while the Ashley Madison infidelity dating website made front page headlines when the data of subscribers was stolen and then published by hackers.
Now those working in insurance have admitted they too have suffered breaches – although it appears the industry is ahead of its rivals in other sectors.
The Crown Records Management Survey revealed:
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55 per cent of IT decision makers in the sector said their company had lost important data. This was far better than Facilities Management (75 per cent), Retail (68 per cent) and the legal sector (69 per cent)
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On average decision makers reported data had been lost almost twice – less than half the figure in Facilities Management, Banking and the Public Sector
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Just over 17 per cent reported their company had suffered a hack – in Facilities Management the figure was a whopping 40 per cent.
Ann Sellar, Business Development Manager at Crown Records Management, a global information management expert, said: “These survey results show the insurance sector is ahead of its rivals and that is good news. But nevertheless the overall figures should still be a wake-up call because the importance of protecting customer data is higher than ever. Not only because of potential fines for data breaches (which will soon increase when the EU General Data Protection Regulation is ratified) but also because of growing public awareness.
“It takes on average 20 years to build a reputation but just five minutes to ruin it with a data breach and then up to two years to rebuild it. So businesses need to look at the way they protect their information, understand where the threats are and start putting robust processes in place to protect their customers. If they don’t I can only see the number of data breaches increasing in the next few years.”
The Survey also unveiled the personal problems experienced by senior IT decision makers, and again the insurance industry came out well.
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Only 8 per cent say they have personally lost sensitive data – in Facilities Management a whopping 25 per cent admitted losing data
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Only 6 per cent say they have accidentally left sensitive documents somewhere – the lowest across all sectors. In Facilities Management the figure was 22 per cent
Ann Sellar added: “Although hacking is big news we estimate 80 per cent of data breaches come from human error. So it is encouraging to see the low numbers of those in the insurance sector being careless with sensitive data.
“All businesses need to ensure they are doing everything they can to reduce this risk through staff training, robust procedures and working with approved, specialist suppliers to give them the best chance of protecting their data.”
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