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Study Pinpoints IT Security's Top Data Security Concerns

  • Study Pinpoints IT Security's Top Data Security Concerns-

    Uncertainty over Location and Risk of Data

    The two most significant security challenges facing IT security practitioners are: 1) not knowing the location of sensitive data and 2) not understanding the risk of compromise associated with that data. According to the study, 62 percent of respondents are concerned over lack of visibility into where their organization's sensitive or confidential data resides. Similarly, only 12 percent of respondents understand the risk of structured data contained in databases, and very few respondents have insight into the risk to unstructured data contained in emails or files (8 percent), data located in the cloud (7 percent) and big data used for analytics (5 percent).

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Study Pinpoints IT Security's Top Data Security Concerns

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  • Study Pinpoints IT Security's Top Data Security Concerns-2

    Uncertainty over Location and Risk of Data

    The two most significant security challenges facing IT security practitioners are: 1) not knowing the location of sensitive data and 2) not understanding the risk of compromise associated with that data. According to the study, 62 percent of respondents are concerned over lack of visibility into where their organization's sensitive or confidential data resides. Similarly, only 12 percent of respondents understand the risk of structured data contained in databases, and very few respondents have insight into the risk to unstructured data contained in emails or files (8 percent), data located in the cloud (7 percent) and big data used for analytics (5 percent).

Think your organization's sensitive data is secure? According to a new study, you may want to reconsider. The Data Breaches and Sensitive Data Risks report, published by the Ponemon Institute in partnership with Scale Venture Partners and Informatica, surveyed 432 IT security practitioners to find out what data security concerns are top-of-mind and the approaches they're taking to address these challenges. The findings might surprise you.

The report found that although a majority of security professionals cite data breaches as their top concern, many aren't equipped to protect their organization's sensitive and confidential data. While many security practitioners simply lack the tools to gain insights on the location and risk of sensitive data, others admit that their existing security solutions are ineffective or don't protect against negligent or malicious user behavior. What's more, security isn't prioritized by business leaders — in part because security teams often don't have defined metrics to illustrate the business impact of their programs — making it difficult for security practitioners to obtain the resources needed to protect their organizations' data.

In this slideshow, Ariel Tseitlin of Scale Venture Partners highlights the top data security concerns keeping IT security practitioners up at night.