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Compared to other key corporate executives, CEOs appear to underestimate the IT security risks faced by their own organizations, according to a survey of C-level executives released today by the Ponemon Institute. The Ponemon survey (download PDF) of 213 CEOs, CIOs, COOs and other senior executives reveals what appears to be a perception gap between CEOs and other senior managers concerning information security issues. For instance, 48% of CEOs surveyed said they believe hackers rarely try to access corporate data. On the other hand, some 53% of other C-level executives believe that their company's data is under attack on a daily or even hourly basis. The survey also found that the top executives were less aware of specific security incidents at their companies than other C-level executives and are more confident that data breaches can be easily avoided. Ponemon found that CEOs tend to view data protection efforts as vital to maintaining good customer satisfaction levels and to the company's brand image. The other managers, however, were more likely to say that the most important role for data security efforts is to satisfy regulatory requirements. The survey also found that CEOs and other top managers differed in their opinion of who is responsible for protecting corporate data. While eight out of 10 respondents said they believe there is one person responsible for data protection in their organization, there was a sharp difference of opinion on just who that person was. More than half of the CEOs said that CIOs are responsible for protecting data at their companies; only 24% of other senior managers felt the same way. And 85% of respondents said someone else would be held responsible for a data breach. "On the issue of accountability, we found that while people acknowledged that data breaches were a problem, very few people felt that if [their company] suffered a breach, they would be held responsible," said Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute.

Compared to other key corporate executives, CEOs appear to underestimate the IT security risks faced by their own organizations, according to a survey of C-level executives released today by the Ponemon Institute. The Ponemon survey (download PDF) of 213 CEOs, CIOs, COOs and other senior executives reveals what appears to be a perception gap between CEOs and other senior managers concerning information security issues. For instance, 48% of CEOs surveyed said they believe hackers rarely try to access corporate data. On the other hand, some 53% of other C-level executives believe that their company's data is under attack on a daily or even hourly basis. The survey also found that the top executives were less aware of specific security incidents at their companies than other C-level executives and are more confident that data breaches can be easily avoided. Ponemon found that CEOs tend to view data protection efforts as vital to maintaining good customer satisfaction levels and to the company's brand image. The other managers, however, were more likely to say that the most important role for data security efforts is to satisfy regulatory requirements. The survey also found that CEOs and other top managers differed in their opinion of who is responsible for protecting corporate data. While eight out of 10 respondents said they believe there is one person responsible for data protection in their organization, there was a sharp difference of opinion on just who that person was. More than half of the CEOs said that CIOs are responsible for protecting data at their companies; only 24% of other senior managers felt the same way. And 85% of respondents said someone else would be held responsible for a data breach. "On the issue of accountability, we found that while people acknowledged that data breaches were a problem, very few people felt that if [their company] suffered a breach, they would be held responsible," said Larry Ponemon, founder of the Ponemon Institute.

Data security represents both a new market opportunity to sell insurance coverage and a new risk - especially for independent insurance agencies that may not be compliant with data security laws or have plans in place to protect their own companies from data breaches. While data security is an evolving issue, failing to protect data can have a huge financial impact on a company. The average total per-incident cost of a data security breach was $6.65 million, compared to an average per-incident cost of $6.3 million in 2007, according to the "U.S. Cost of Data Breach Study" conducted by data protection company PGP Corp. and information management research firm The Ponemon Institute. The PGP/Ponemon study indicated that data breach incidents cost U.S. companies $202 per compromised customer record in 2008, meaning that companies incur additional costs with an abnormal churn in lost customers. More than 84 percent of data breach cases in 2008 involved organizations that had more than one data breach. And, more than 88 percent of all cases in the study involved insider negligence. The cost of lost business continued to be the most costly effect of a breach, averaging $4.59 million or $139 per record compromised. Lost business now accounts for 69 percent of data breach costs, up from 65 percent in 2007, compared to 54 percent in the 2006 study. "After four years of conducting this study, one thing remains constant: U.S. businesses continue to pay dearly for having a data breach," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of The Ponemon Institute. "As costs only continue to rise, companies must remain on guard or face losing valuable customers in this unpredictable economy." Includes video: Data Security Creating Insurance Agent Sales Opportunities

What companies do you trust to guard your privacy? According to a Wednesday study from the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe, eBay is the most trusted company for privacy, followed by Verizon and the U.S. Postal Service. Facebook, meanwhile, cracked the study's top ten for the first time. To reach its conclusions, Ponemon and TRUSTe first polled more than 6,000 adults on their "most trusted" brands. An expert review panel then compared those results against the companies' privacy statements, notices, to what levels they accessed account information, their cookie management, in- and out-of-network data sharing practices, and the availability of customer service staff. Of the top 10 companies, seven of them were technology-related. The entire list includes eBay, Verizon, the U.S. Postal Service, WebMD, IBM, Procter & Gamble, Nationwide, Intuit, Yahoo, and Facebook. "With the banking industry at the center of a national financial crisis, it's no surprise to see a loss of trust reflected in the rankings of even those top performers on this list," Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said in a statement. "Meanwhile, the continued strong showing of e-businesses such as eBay, WebMD, Yahoo, and Facebook seems to demonstrate consumers' growing comfort with doing business online."

A typical lost or stolen laptop costs employers $49,246, mostly due to the value of the missing intellectual property or other sensitive data, according to an Intel-commissioned study made public Wednesday. "It is the information age, and employees are carrying more information on their laptops than ever before," according to an analysis done for Intel by the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute, which studies organizational data-management practices. "With each lost laptop there is the risk that sensitive data about customers, employees and business operations will end up in the wrong hands." The five-month study examined 138 laptop-loss cases suffered over a recent 12-month period by 29 organizations, mostly businesses but also a few government agencies. It said laptops frequently are lost or stolen at airports, conferences and in taxis, rental cars and hotels. About 80 percent of the typical cost - or a little more than $39,000 - was attributed to what the report called a data breach, which can involve everything from hard-to-replace company information to data on individuals. Companies then often incur major expenses to prevent others from misusing the data. Lost intellectual property added nearly $5,000 more to the average cost. The rest of the estimated expense was associated with such things as investigative costs, lost productivity and replacing the laptop. Larry Ponemon, the institute's chairman and Advertisement founder, said he came up with the cost figure based on his discussions with the employers who lost the laptops. When he later shared his findings with the companies and government agencies, he said, some of their executives expressed surprise at the size of the average loss. But he noted that one of the employers thought the amount could have been even higher.

Six out of every 10 employees stole company data when they left their job last year, said a study of US workers. The survey, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, said that so-called malicious insiders use the information to get a new job, start their own business or for revenge. "They are making these judgements based out of fear and anxiety," the Institute's Mike Spinney told BBC News. "People are worried about their jobs and want to hedge their bets," he said. "Our study showed that 59% of people will say 'I'm going to take something of value with me when I go'." The Ponemon Institute, a privacy and management research firm, surveyed 945 adults in the United States who were laid-off, fired or changed jobs in the last 12 months. Everyone that took part had access to proprietary information such as customer data, contact lists, employee records, financial reports, confidential business documents, software tools or other intellectual property.

67% of French Organisations Hit By One or More Data Breach Incidents Within Last Twelve Months Research from Ponemon Institute Reveals that only 9 Percent of Respondents have an Overall Encryption Plan or Strategy Applied Consistently across the Enterprise PARIS and MENLO PARK, Calif., Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- PGP Corporation, a global leader in enterprise data protection, has announced the results of its inaugural annual study by The Ponemon Institute, identifying the steps French organisations are taking in order to safeguard their confidential data. The 2009 Annual Study: France Enterprise Encryption Trends study, which polled 414 IT security professionals at enterprises and public sector organisations, found that 67 percent of French organisations have been hit by at least one data breach incident within the last year, with 18 percent having been hit by more than five incidents. A massive 92 percent of the data breaches were never disclosed as there was no legal or regulatory requirement to do so. Despite the large number of data breach incidents, 71 percent responded that data protection was a 'very important' or 'important' part of their risk management strategy, with protecting sensitive or confidential information in motion (transfer) or at rest (storage) their top priority.

"The cost of a data breach increased last year to $204 per compromised customer record, according to the Ponemon Institute's annual study. The average total cost of a data breach rose from $6.65 million in 2008 to $6.75 million in 2009. "

Cost of data breaches continue to increase while IT looks the other way.

Affixing a dollar cost to a problem has immense benefit, and The Ponemon Institute goes to great lengths to arrive at the figures for its Annual Cost of a Data Breach Study. We painstakingly analyzed the financial impact a data breach has on a company by examining 43 different companies from a cross section of industries, all of which experienced a significant data breach affecting a range of data records representative of the norm. And knowing that a data breach may cost your company $6.65 million dollars may be all the information that is needed for a company to assign an appropriate budget to those tasked with information security. In 2008 the average total cost of a data breach was $6.65 million, up from $6.35 million last year and $4.54 in 2005. In 2008, the per-victim cost of a data breach was $202, up from $197 in 2007, and from $138 when the study was launched in 2005. Breaches involving a third party to which data had been outsourced bore a per-victim cost of $231, whereas self contained breaches bore a per-victim cost of $179. Breaches that were the result of a malicious act bore a per-victim cost of $225, whereas breaches that were the result of negligence bore a per-victim cost of $199. Breaches that were the result of a lost of stolen laptop computer bore a per-victim cost of $249, whereas breaches that did not involve a lost or stolen laptop computer bore a per-victim cost of $177. If the data breach was a first-time event for the company the per victim cost was $243, but if the company had experienced a breach previously the per victim cost was $192. The simple conclusion to these numbers is clear: the financial impact for a company that experiences a data breach is significant and rising. That finding alone may be alarming, but it seems to merely quantify what most people already knew to be true. The "wow" factor comes when you realize that we haven't simply identified the cost of an inevitable outcome, as if to tell the world, "buckle up and brac

The Oklahoma Department of Human Services (DHS) is notifying more than one million state residents that their personal data was stored on an unencrypted laptop that was stolen from an agency employee. The computer file contained the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and home addresses of Oklahoma's Human Services' clients receiving benefits from programs such as Medicaid, child care assistance, nutrition aid and disability benefits, the agency announced Thursday. The computer, which was stolen when a thief broke into the car April 3 after the employee stopped on her way home from work, was password protected, and officials do not believe the burglar realized what he or she was stealing. Therefore, the risk of the data being accessed is minimal, according to the agency. "We feel this was not a situation where someone was targeting the agency or that information," DHS spokeswoman Mary Leaver told SCMagazineUS.com on Friday. "We feel it was random." Leaver said the state Office of Inspector General is conducting an investigation, out of which likely will come a mandatory review of information security policies. However, it is not believed the employee violated existing policy when the incident occurred, she said. News of the theft comes one day after the Ponemon Institute, in conjunction with Intel, released a study that found the average value of a lost laptop is $49,246. About 80 percent of the cost is related to the chance that a breach could occur, the study showed.

There were only two of us on the graveyard shift. "If it's not locked up," a colleague at my first newspaper declared as he snatched a folder of papers from our boss' desk and strode towards the office copying machine, "Xerox it." (Old-tongue for photocopy.) That was long before CDs, and USB drives and, certainly, iPods, but the lesson was the same. If you are stupid about protecting company information, shame on you. I guess that's the message behind the "revelation" released in a survey this week that the majority of people who leave their jobs, voluntarily or otherwise, are taking company information with them. Lots of it. My reaction was the same as when I watched my fellow journalist grab and copy whatever it was that had been so carelessly left in the open. I shrugged. (We are by nature an overly curious species, and that overrides our normally dominant ethics gene.) Data Loss Risks During Downsizing conducted by the Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Symantec, was apparently designed to test the hypothesis that in this dire economy (ominous music in background), former employees are going to take important company information out the door. And, in fact, the poll of 945 former employees who left their jobs or were dismissed in the last 12 months showed that 59% stole company data. What kind of data? Email lists, non-financial business information and customer information, including contact lists. Not the secret formula for Coke, not the clinical trial reports on a cure for cancer, no insider information on proposed mergers and acquisitions. Not even a few thousand credit card numbers. Hardly worthy of shock and dismay. This is what a lot of people do when they leave jobs. Are they supposed to? No. Is it wrong? Yeah, but it's sort of like cheating on taxes. Folks rationalize it in a variety of ways, or it just doesn't weigh heavily enough on their conscience to set off an internal alarm. Most of the people who took data - 79% â

A recent data breach study commissioned by the state of Maine sheds light on the losses banks experienced as a result of the data breaches at TJX and Hannaford Brother's supermarkets. The state's banks said they incurred $2.1 million in expenses related to data breaches since January 1, 2007. The Hannaford breach had the largest impact, affecting 71 financial institutions and incurring $1.6 million in expenses according to the Maine Data Breach Study. Hannaford is based in Scarborough, Maine. The TJX breach accounted for $485,000 in expenses. The report was issued by the Main Bureau of Financial Institutions in November 2008. It studied the impact of data security breaches on Maine banks and credit unions. Fifty credit unions and 25 banks headquartered in Maine responded to the survey. Financial institutions reported more than 18 million records breached last year, according to the Identity Theft Research Center. The San Diego-based nonprofit found that data breach reports across five industry sectors jumped to 656 last year, up 47% from 2007. About 12% of the reports came from financial-services firms, up from 7% in 2007. In Maine, the Hannaford breach resulted in more than $318,000 in gross fraud losses, according to data reported by 22 financial institutions. More than 700 accounts were used to buy items fraudulently, although five of the 22 institutions that suffered a fraud loss did not report the number of accounts, according to the report. The Hannaford breach cost some banks as much as $58,000 to reissue credit cards to customers. Investigation expenses cost nearly $30,000 for some banks. Communication to customers cost nearly $28,000, some banks and credit unions reported. Fraud losses of nearly $45,000 were tied to the TJX data breach. The losses were reported by six financial institutions. The expenses for reissuing credit cards cost some banks as much as $32,000. Investigation expenses were as high as $21,000 for some banks. Communication to custom

Though Facebook has sometimes been criticized for sacrificing the privacy of its users in order to monetize the service, Chris Kelly, Facebook's chief privacy officer, has presided over the social network's efforts to build out the most sophisticated privacy options in the industry. On a granular level, Facebook users can now control what bits of information they share with each individual friend, group or network. Facebook users have taken notice. According to an annual study by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research firm, Facebook ranks within the top 20 (15th) most trusted companies for privacy as rated by U.S. consumers. Kelly's job sometimes appears tricky, however. He must ensure that users feel they have control over their information, while weighing that need against Facebook's business model, which relies heavily on a culture of openness and sharing. Here is the full interview CIO conducted with Kelly during our reporting for a special feature on social networks and privacy. Kelly talked about what constitutes Facebook's overall view towards privacy, and how that affects its ability to serve up ads.

Identity theft concerns are focused on the security and necessity of the collection process. Collecting personal information just because you can is unsafe. Organizations can reduce privacy risks by not collecting unnecessary personal info. Once the data gets into the data life cycle pipeline, the cost of managing and destroying it escalates. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that as many as 9 million people have their identities stolen every year. According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, more than 200 million instances of data breaches have occurred since the beginning of 2005, and they show no signs of letting up. In the first quarter of 2008 alone, more than 85 million incidents were reported. The causes of data breaches run the gamut: Hackers get unencrypted, transmitted data and data at rest; laptops are stolen or lost; storage Relevant Products/Services devices are lost by third-party shipping companies; flash drives or PDAs are left lying around; Social Security numbers are accidentally printed on envelopes; or data is found on discarded computers. This article examines the organizational risks to CPAs and their clients or corporate employers of improperly managed data throughout the data life cycle. It also discusses best data management practices and proper procedures for responding to a data breach. Data breaches, whatever the cause, are costly. According to a study by the Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach in 2007 was $6.3 million. The average cost to an organization per record compromised is about $197, which is typically spent on phone calls for customer notification, providing free credit monitoring, discounts on membership fees, or discounts on merchandise to make up for the security Relevant Products/Services breach. Some organizations also experience an increase in customer turnover. The organization typically spends additional money in data protection Relevant Products/Services enhancements. Companies sanctioned by