The use of live customer data for testing applications is
practiced by 42% of IT departments, according to a new survey
commissioned by software tools company Compuware and carried out by
research-based marketing consultancy Vanson Bourne. The majority of
the companies will not have notified their customers of this use of
their data, which could amount to a breach of privacy
legislation.
The survey questioned 100 IT directors of the UK’s top 2,000
organisations and found that, in contrast with other data abuse
issues such as spam, the way in which IT departments use customer
data has been “greatly overlooked.”
According to the findings, 13% of the sample viewed the 1998
Data Protection Act as “being outside of their area of
responsibility”, whilst as much as 47% stated that they were “only
vaguely familiar” with the Act.
Ian Clark, Director of Enterprise Management Solutions,
Compuware EMEA, said:
“Using customer data to ensure that an IT
system designed to process customer data is working properly would
seem to make good sense. However, companies that indulge in this
practice are not only compromising their customers’ rights and
opening themselves up to prosecution and hefty times, they’re also
at risk of damaging their corporate reputations if test documents
such as invoices find their way out to real customers.”
