Survey: Data Breach Bigger Fear than Hacker Attacks
Image: Melanie Gamarra
Seventy percent of compliance professionals feel their organizations are well or very well prepared to counter cyber attacks, however, their confidence decreases significantly when assessing other data breach threats, according to a new survey.
More than half (61 percent) of the polled individuals in Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics and the Health Care Compliance Association‘s survey said an accidental breach by an employee was very or somewhat likely, and 41 percent said they felt the same way about accidental breaches by third-party vendors. Only 8 percent said it was somewhat or very likely a hacker would gain access to the system.
When it comes to hackers, 70 percent indicated their organizations were well or very well prepared. But the numbers dropped significantly when assessing other threats. For example, just 51 percent felt they were well or very well prepared for an accidental breach by a third party.
“The fear over unintentional breaches suggest that employees and vendors still don’t fully understand the need to safeguard data and despite training, people will still make mistakes,” said Roy Snell, SCCE and HCCA chief executive officer. “Further training and hard controls that make it more difficult to share data are necessary.”
Work to raise employee sensitivities and improve control are possible factors behind the increasing time invested by business in privacy compliance. The survey found that 82 percent of respondents had invested more time on the issue of data privacy compliance in the previous year.
The report concluded that the fear of unintentional breaches suggest that employees and vendors still do not fully comprehend the need to protect data, and despite training, people will continue making mistakes.
“This argues for both further training and hard controls that make it more difficult to share data that was not meant to be shared,” the report said.
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