CompTIA: Organizations Express Growing Concerns About Data Security

On nearly a daily basis, we hear news reports of corporate databases being hacked, sensitive government information being leaked or customers’ personal data being compromised. It’s little wonder that keeping data secure is a top priority for most organizations.

In fact, CompTIA’s ninth-annual Information Security Trends study, released last month, showed that 70 percent of U.S. companies rated security as a high/upper priority. That’s up from 49 percent just the year before.

One in five organizations polled definitely experienced the loss of sensitive data in the past 12 months. Another 32 percent said it’s likely they had a loss. Of those reporting the loss of confidential data, 65 percent said it was corporate financial data, 52 percent lost employee data, 27 percent lost customer data, and 26 percent lost intellectual property or trade secrets.

With cybercrime accounting for a large portion of data breaches, such activities cost organizations $114 billion, annually, according to a 2011 Norton Cybercrime Report. When lost staff time is factored in, the total reaches $388 billion.

Cybersecurity will continue to be an issue as more people (employees, customers, partners, etc.) need to access corporate data through mobile devices and the like, keeping it secure creates new challenges for IT organizations, CompTIA notes. Compounding the issue is a shortage of IT workers skilled in information security. About 40 percent of the organizations polled said they face challenges in hiring IT security specialists.

In the end, data security is an ongoing challenge and opportunity for IT professionals. For anyone looking for a place to start or ways to refocus their security efforts, Gabe Goldberg offers a series of tips in his article “Resolve to Keep Your Mainframe Secure in 2012.” It’s a quick read on Destinationz.org, and while it focuses on mainframe users, many of the recommendations are applicable to any platform.