Australian data breaches on the increase

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 11 August 2009 08:01

Business IT - Technology

The study also found that the percentage of respondents who believed that the use of encryption increases customers’ trust and confidence in the organisation’s privacy or data security commitments had increased from 32 percent in 2008 to 38 percent in 2009, and using encryption to comply with privacy or data security regulations and requirements had increased from 13 percent in 2009 to 15 percent in 2009. 

In response to some high profile cases of lost and stolen laptops, together with the increased business use of smart-phones, the Ponemon  study also assessed organisational approaches to encrypting data held on mobile devices, and found that more than 64 percent of respondents say it is very important or important to encrypt employees’ mobile devices and 55 percent believe that it is very important or important to provide end-to-end email security for Windows Mobile 6.0/6.1 Professional Edition.

According to PGP’s president and CEO, Phillip Dunkelberger, Australian organisations are in a unique position to be able to lead the next generation of privacy and data security regulations in the Asia Pacific region, and he said "the Ponemon data shows us that Australian organisations are already taking a proactive approach to protecting customer information and other valuable data assets.”

Dunkelberger said the study found that 75 percent of Australian businesses have fully executed or just launched implementation of data encryption technology while 25 percent are in the process of implementing encryption in order to protect sensitive information. 

“Encryption is most widely used to protect the data held on file servers, Virtual Private Networks (VPN) and databases.  VOIP and mainframe encryption are the least deployed applications.

“Other high priority activities in 2009 also include data archive and e-discovery systems with 71percent fully executed or recently launched and endpoint device control technologies with 70 percent fully executed or just launched.  The activities with the highest in-process response in 2009 include the implementation of endpoint-based data leak detection and prevention technologies, identity and access management systems and strong authentication devices.”