Data breach fears rise

One in three IT professionals fears a major data security breach – accidental or malicious – could put them out of business, research conducted by Datamonitor for security firm McAfee has found.

The survey of 1,400 IT professionals from companies with more than 250 employees also found that 60% had experienced a data breach in the past year, but that the average spend on data security was just 0.5% of overall IT budgets.

A data breach that exposes personal information could cost companies an average of £134,000 to inform their customers - even if the lost data is never used.

The average cost of a data leak is £900,000.

Rising cost of data security breaches fuel security spending >>

US group calls for IT security breach notification law >>

Citibank reissues customer cards after data security breach >>

David Lacey’s security blog >>
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Stuart King’s risk management blog >>
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