News that a large organisation has lost data has become
increasingly common. This week it emerged that the personal details
of a million banking customers were viewable on a computer which
was sold for £35 on eBay.
Last week the Government revealed that information on every
prisoner in England and Wales had been on an unencrypted memory
stick which had been lost by a private sector contractor.
A survey by the organisers of the Infosecurity Europe conference
has found that 69% of the workers in that sector they asked rated
the most significant issue they faced as 'how to prevent data
leakage from within an organisation'.
The 99 respondents to the survey were asked to rank their top
five security priorities. The second most important one was how to
make the equipment and connections of remote workers secure. The
third was ensuring the compliance of workers with regulations.
Infosecurity Europe's Mike Barwise said that workers in the
sector had correctly identified risks but were not being practical
enough about what might mitigate those risks.
"The respondents are clearly aware of business risk from major
exposures such as data leakage and insecure remote working, but
still seem to be seeking magic bullets – practical solutions
including future proof security, standards compliance and secure
development do not rank highly as priorities," he said. "It seems
the business/technical divide is as great as ever, and remains the
limiting factor in corporate information security.”
Barwise said that security was still too often not the top
priority as systems are being built. "Even where security has been
considered at the inception of a project, lack of security
understanding, inadequate systems analysis, over-optimistic
budgeting and time pressure on the part of both business and
developers can lead to it being pared away as the project
progresses," he said.
"It comes to be seen as an overhead, a drag on progress and a
nuisance, and as a result is relegated further and further towards
the back row as priorities are revised. The result is most often a
disaster waiting to happen."
