“Our observations suggest that the vast number of breaches occurring on an almost daily basis indicates that businesses – just like individuals – are still struggling to get the basics right when it comes to securing their data.” -- David Gibson, Varonis Vice President
Commenting on reports that the Bank of England’s director of financial stability has pushed cybercriminal and allied hacking attacks up the agenda – ahead, even, of the Eurozone crisis – Varonis says this indicates the growing value that organisations are placing on their data.
David Gibson, vice president with the data governance software specialist, said that Andrew Haldane of the Bank of England is right to be concerned about the issue, as it is clear that cybercriminals are now after any customer data they can extract from financial services institutions like banks, in order to monetise their frauds.
“Reuters reported that four of the six main banks in the UK viewed a cyberattack as their biggest threat six months ago, now one of the two remaining banks has joined their peers in taking this view,” he said.
“In the results of a survey we released in April of this year (http://bit.ly/YgmFu3), we found that 91% of people trust businesses to keep their data safe – despite PWC reported data breaches for 93% of large organisations and 87% of small businesses being seen so far this year,” he added.
The key question, the Varonis VP went on to say, is that it is clear that consumers value the security of their data very highly - as witnessed by the fact that 97% of survey respondents said they are more willing to do business with a company that protects their data.
In addition, he says, more than half (54%) of respondents to the Varonis survey said they would pay a premium for data protection.
“Our survey results (http://www.varonis.com/research/#maturity) suggest that the vast number of breaches occurring on an almost daily basis indicates that businesses – just like individuals – are still struggling to get the basics right when it comes to securing their data,” he said.
“For this reason, all businesses – and not just banks - have a role to play in eradicating their bad digital habits and taking more control of their security by implementing basic security best practices - such as ensuring that staff only have access to the data they need, that all access to all data is monitored, and abuse is investigated,” he added