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PGP Corporation has announced the results of the third annual study by The Ponemon Institute, identifying the steps UK organisations are taking in order to safeguard their confidential data. The 2009 Annual Study: UK. Enterprise Encryption Trends study, which polled IT security professionals at 615 enterprises and public sector organisations, found that 70% of UK organisations have been hit by at least one data breach incident within the last year, up from 60% in the previous year.

The number of firms experiencing multiple breaches was also up, with 12% of respondents admitting to more than five data loss incidents in the twelve month period (up from 3%). Less than half of these breaches (43%) were publically announced; there was no legal or regulatory requirement to disclose the remaining 57% of incidents.

The public sector experienced the highest number of data loss incidents in the last year; reporting an average of 4.48 breaches per organisation. Financial services firms were the next most likely to suffer data loss (an average of 3.11 incidents per year); followed by the education sector (2.74), healthcare and pharmaceutical firms (2.65) and the professional services industry (2.52). Faring better were the entertainment, media and defence sectors, none of which reported any data breaches.

We have to think about what we mean about data breaches, it can range from that email sent in error to more serious data or customer private data loss, that said we need to continue that difficult line of managing the need to make data accessible to the right teams and protecting the organization and our clients from data loss or exposure. The more dialogue and discussion we have in this area the better, though it’s not just a technical mindset, it’s an operational and organizational one, we need people to appreciate the importance of data, in terms of revenue and exposure and operationally – how much data is kept online and how accessible is it and who is it accessible to?

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