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Survey Reveals Australians Attitudes toward Data Breaches

November 30, 2011

The Security Index 2011 global survey conducted by Unisys, a worldwide information technology company, revealed Australians feelings toward data breaches. According to an article in Computerworld, legal action, exposure, and closing accounts are some of the responses Australians would take if their data was breached by a company.

Of the 1,205 people surveyed, 47% would take legal action against the company and 64% would expose the breach to the public, according to Computerworld. Additionally, 85% of respondents would take their business elsewhere and only 24% said they would continue dealing with the same company while not using their online services.   

Unisys Asia Pacific security program director, John Kendall, said these findings have proven that Australians would be “unforgiving” if their information was breached either accidently or as part of an attack. “There are very real business and financial implications from the loss of customers' trust and confidence,” Kendall said. “Data security is not just an IT issue but a business issue.”

According to the Computerworld article, out of the countries surveyed in the Index, people in Australia and the United States were most likely to expose a data breach issue in a public forum, such as Twitter. Kendall noted this was interesting given that mandatory data breach notification laws recently considered by the Australian Law Reform Commission were not implemented.

 “It appears that if there is no formal data breach notification requirement, the public is likely to take matters into their own hands,” Kendall said. “Social media such as Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook has given consumers a new channel to publically vent their anger directly to other consumers.” 

Data security is indeed a business issue. ARMA International’s Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles® (GARP®) framework for effective information governance draws particular attention to the importance of protecting records and information from unauthorized use. The annotation to this principle states in part: “A recordkeeping program must ensure that appropriate protection controls are applied to information from the moment it is created to the moment it undergoes final disposition. Therefore, every system that generates, stores, and uses information should be examined with the protection principle in mind .to ensure that appropriate controls are applied to such systems.” (Visit www.arma.org/garp/protection.cfm for more information).

There are many ways in which information can be compromised. Breaches may be caused by malicious hackers or disgruntled employees who intentionally compromise the information. Sometimes data leaks are the unintentional result of an employee losing a laptop or flash drive that has confidential information stored on it.

However, as this story points out – when companies fail to protect their information adequately, the consequences can be very real.

 

Diane Carlisle

NewsWire