Guest Blogger: Virgil Vaduva, Director of Information Security and Compliance
A recent study from Symantec and Ponemon found that 64% of data breaches in 2012 were the result of basic human error and IT system glitches. On average, these breaches cost $136 per record, and the average loss per breach in the U.S. was $5.4 million.
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The researchers gave 4 recommendations on how companies can help prevent data loss–and, consequently, time and money.
- First, organizations can work to educate their employees better on how to handle confidential information. This may include outlining proper security procedures as well as emphasizing the seriousness of working with potentially sensitive information.
- Second, the use of data loss prevention technology can help find sensitive information and prevent it from leaving a secure environment, in the event that a security protocol is ignored or missed.
- Encryption and authentication can also help prevent access to sensitive data, both on the storage drive and the data itself.
- Finally, if all else fails, organizations should have an incident response plan in place to quickly notify customers of a breach.
What do you think? Can better education of employees help reduce the potential for data breaches? Or is this just hype, and we should focus our efforts more on preventing outside attacks on data?
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