Survey Finds Majority Of Organizations Lack Data Leakage Solutions

Oct 21, 2008 11:41 AM

A recently released study, which surveyed 100 IT professionals and security decision makers in North American companies with 500 or more employees, found that 72 percent of organizations had no solution for preventing data leaks over e-mail and 89 percent of organizations lacked an effective anti-spam solution. The study was conducted by IDC and released by Secure Computing Corp.

The survey revealed that while many IT departments are planning to upgrade their messaging security infrastructure, most have not yet deployed technologies required for advanced mail protection.

"Overall, our survey found that organizations need to increase their efforts in combating e-mail security risks," says Brian Burke, program director, security products at IDC. "While organizations have expressed concern about inbound and outbound e-mail security, their current solutions are not getting the job done. Only 11 percent of those surveyed had adequate inbound protection, and over 70 percent have nothing in place for data loss prevention on e-mail. Such organizations need to take advantage of new solutions and delivery models."

The study revealed that e-mail encryption and data loss prevention have become top-of-mind issues for IT executives. In fact, 85 percent of respondents reported that they were very or extremely concerned about data leakage over e-mail. Despite this concern, only 28 percent of those surveyed had implemented a system to prevent those data leaks, while 56 percent planned to do so in the upcoming year.

IDC believes that the vast majority of data loss incidents -- 80 to 90 percent -- occur accidentally. The companies surveyed were much more worried about accidental data loss than deliberate leaks. Only five percent of companies reported that they were extremely concerned about insiders intentionally revealing sensitive information, while 44 percent were extremely concerned about accidental loss.

The survey also found that more unwanted messages are getting through messaging security systems, particularly at large corporations. In all, 28 percent of large organizations reported that their spam complaints had increased by more than 10 percent since the previous year.

Currently, many of these organizations rely on older technology that has not kept pace with the increasing volume of spam and the more sophisticated techniques used by spammers. State-of-the-art anti-spam solutions can block 99 percent or more of unsolicited communications. However, only 11 percent of organizations surveyed said that their messaging security currently meets this standard, and 60 percent said that their solution could not provide even 95 percent effectiveness.

Want to use this article? Click here for options!
© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

This month in Access Control

• Targeting The Customer
• Electronic Pedigrees
• One Hero Among Many
• Who? What? When? Where? Why?
• More from September's issue