Is there any defense against data breaches?

Sep 5, 2006 3:18 PM

Nearly two-thirds of security executives are convinced they have no way to prevent a data breach, according to a survey of 853 U.S.-based information security professionals.
The survey, called the "National Survey on the Detection and Prevention of Data Breaches," was prepared by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and security research firm, and PortAuthority Technologies, a developer of Information Leak Prevention (ILP) solutions.
It found that most of the security executives believe their organizations lack the accountability and resources necessary to enforce data security policy compliance.
Among the key findings: 59 percent of companies believe they can detect a data breach, but 63 percent believe they cannot prevent one -- with high false-positive rates, ineffective policy enforcement and overly costly leak prevention technologies comprising a big part of the problem.
Only 43 percent of respondents believe their company can detect a large data breach involving more than 10,000 customer records at an 80-percent rate.
But technology is probably the problem's silver lining. More than 66 percent of respondents report that technologies help their organizations manage the leakage of sensitive information. Access management is the most often-used solution to prevent a data breach (41%). This finding suggests that close management of system access on a "need-to-know" basis is a good way to curtail data leaks. The second most important technology concerns secure network solutions (27%) and data encryption (22%).
Of the organizations that use different types of technologies to help detect data breaches, approximately 39 percent say that content filtering is the most prevalent technology used today, the report says. More than 28 percent report that keyword monitoring technology is used by their organizations. Other technologies used to prevent a data breach include: data leak detection and prevention, event management systems, intrusion detection and digital rights management solutions.
For the full survey report, visit www.portauthoritytech.com/breachsurvey

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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