Crucial data relating to legal matters, credit card information and test results stored in digital files are lost or stolen from company files every day, even as most Indian firms admit not having a comprehensive data loss protection programme in place.
A recent study by software security provider Symantec India, where the surveyors spoke to CIOs, CTOs or IT heads of over 140 Indian companies, found that as many as 79 per cent of the respondents felt data loss was their largest information security concern. More than 56 per cent of data residing in Indian enterprises is considered to be sensitive and most of this data are in the form of source code and intellectual property as well as employee and customer accounts.
Who’s in danger?
The worst-affected sectors are banking and finance, manufacturing, media, telecom, IT and other services.
What is stolen or lost?
Topping the list of most affected data are: credit card details, employee records, formulas, test results, project data, and legal cases. About 16 per cent of organisations in India admitted to facing a data loss issue in the recent past.
Reasons for data loss:
MOBILE STORAGE: Increasing theft of laptops and smart phones where data loss is non-recoverable.
MALICIOUS INSIDERS: Over 67 per cent respondents said they used their former company’s confidential or sensitive information to leverage a new job.
HACKERS: Symantec created more than 1.6 million new malicious code signatures in 2008, 60 per cent more than the total signatures ever created by the company.
UNAWARE USERS: Nearly one in 400 e-mailed messages contain confidential data.
