Australian data breaches on the increase

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 08:01

Business IT - Technology

Almost 70 percent of Australian businesses and organisations were hit by one or more data breach incidents in the past year, a major increase on the situation in the previous 12 months.

IT security professionals at 482 enterprises were surveyed and 69 percent of the organisations had been hit once or more – up from 56 percent in the previous year – while the number of firms (41%) experiencing multiple breaches, or more than two data loss incidents, rose by 28 percent over the previous year.

Data protection company, PGP Corporation, has released the results of the second annual study by The Ponemon Institute, which also revealed that of those organisations that did admit to a breach in the last 12 months, 65 percent were never publically announced, as there was no legal or regulatory requirement to disclose the incidents.

Despite the rising number of data breaches, PGP says Australian organisations are aware of the consequences of such incidents, with 66% of respondents stating that data protection played an ‘important’ or ‘very important’ role in an organisation’s overall risk management efforts, with 57 percent felt encryption helped them meet privacy commitments and 70 percent believed encryption was a critical factor in protecting a company’s reputation.
 
According to Dr Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of The Ponemon Institute, the institute had found that throughout the world, “breaches are on the rise as well in the Australian market where they increased 13 percent year over year.

“There is encouraging news in the Australian market, 85% of the respondents stated that when they take a strategic approach to their encryption applications and use a platform approach it increases the effectiveness and efficiency of their IT security program.”

Dr Ponemon said the primary benefits of the platform approach to managing encryption across the enterprise include reducing operational costs, eliminating redundant administrator tasks and supporting the development of a strategic encryption strategy.

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