Want to hear something scary? No? Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. A new study came out today stating that 85 percent of businesses in the U.S. experienced at least one data breach in the past 12 months, in line with 2008 findings when 84 percent of businesses experienced a breach.
I’m not here to ruin your day; rather, I want to remind you that we all need to stay informed about data breaches and be aware of the services available to help protect our good names.
The fourth annual U.S. Encryption Trends Study, sponsored by encryption supplier PGP Corp., was released today by The Ponemon Institute and once again brings the problem of data security to the forefront. And, just in case you think these numbers are exaggerated, they are in line with a similar study reported last week regarding businesses based in the United Kingdom.
I have included below a few of the results from the 2009 study, which included interviews with approximately 1,000 U.S. executives and IT professionals. According to their findings:
- Encryption of data on mobile data-bearing devices used by employees is very important or important. More than 59 percent of respondents say it is very important or important to encrypt employees’ mobile devices – a sign that organizations recognize that valuable data is more mobile than ever.
- More than 70% have fully executed or just launched data encryption strategy in their organization. Once again data encryption strategies are being implemented across a majority of the respondent participants. The majority of organizations, 78 percent, have some type of encryption strategy, up from 74 percent in 2008 and from 66 percent in 2007.
- Companies suffering more than 5 data breaches rose to 22 percent in 2009 up from 13 percent in 2008.
- Encryption is mostly used to mitigate data breaches and comply with privacy and data protection regulations. In addition, there was an increase in the percentage of respondents who reported that encryption is also important to preserving brand and reputation.
So, you may ask, “What does this have to do with me as a consumer and how can I protect myself and my good credit reputation?” While you, as an individual, probably cannot prevent any of these data breaches from occurring, what you can do is take a proactive approach to monitoring your credit. Educate yourself on identity theft, understand your credit score, review your credit report and monitor your credit on an ongoing basis.
