Businesses continue to pay the price for careless staff

NEWSFLASH – the UK is out of recession.  But many organisations are still feeling the pinch.

Some businesses are struggling to stay afloat.  But this is not the time to get complacent with data protection.

All organisations, not just commercial companies, can no longer afford to suffer damage to their reputation, especially as consumer-led pressure and social media can help spread bad news almost instantly.

No organisation can afford to overlook the indirect costs and impacts of a data loss.  A business that is just about managing to keep its head above water, may just drown under the pressure of a significant data loss incident.  In times like these, client loyalty is essential and a data leak may put clients and their cash in jeopardy.

The first port of call is staff.  When I say staff, I mean all personnel.

New figures released by the Ponemon Institute and Absolute Software Corporation reveal that 53 per cent of British business managers have disengaged their encryption on their laptops.  Of this, 61 per cent said that a lost or stolen laptop resulted in a data breach.

Staff are on the frontlines of personal data and carelessness is not acceptable.  Organisations need to put controls in place for all employees to follow.  Lack of care is an expensive lesson to be learned.

According to the 2009 Annual Study: UK Cost of a Data Breach, the cost of each lost customer record has risen by seven per cent, from £60 to £64 since 2008.  Yet while this isn’t a significant increase, the number of data losses is unlikely to drop, especially with larger volumes of data being saved on ever smaller storage media devices.

The cost of a customer data breach will climb if measures aren’t taken to secure data.  Surely the cost of cleaning up a data breach would be better spent ensuring it doesn’t happen in the first place?