Research from BT shows that 75% of UK employees either
do not understand what is in their company'sbusiness continuity planor do not
know if their company has one.
Costly
security breaches will continue to plague UK businesses unless
IT departments re-focus on the basics of
information security, according to BT Global Services.
Ray Stanton (pictured), global head of BT's business continuity,
security and governance practice, said, "As the profile of
information security has increased in recent years, so businesses
have become more adept at addressing strategic issues like risk
management, outsourcing and security auditing.
"The worry is that at the same time they have been forgetting
about the fundamentals. Many can no longer see the wood for the
trees. It's time for businesses and the security industry to go
back to basics."
BT believes there are three key areas that need the most urgent
attention by IT departments:
1) Encryption: Organisations are ignoring the
importance of data encryption. The recent case involving HMRC,
where
disks containing unencrypted data relating to 25m people were
lost in the post, is a case in point
2) Denial of service attacks: BT believes that
the majority of
DoS attacks, which can cripple websites or web-based services,
can be avoided by using the latest threat management systems
3) Communication: BT believes that businesses
need to do much more to educate their staff on their roles and
responsibilities when it comes to protecting corporate data and
ensuring business continuity
BT research reveals that nearly a quarter of employees (22%) say
losing a mobile electronic device containing sensitive/private
business information would not be a disaster.
But 38% who have lost a mobile electronic device admitted it
wasn't secure.
In addition, whilst 41% know their company has a business
continuity plan, they have either not taken the time to read it or
do not fully understand what is in it.