While the majority of information security experts report data leakage incidents in their organizations, almost an equal percentage of them report little to no confidence in their ability to secure files.
File security provider FileCode released the "2015 State of File Collaboration Security" report, which outlines current threats and attitudes regarding data security.
Here are six key findings from the report.
1. All organizations that responded to the survey expressed significant concern regarding data leakage due to inappropriate sharing or unauthorized access to sensitive information.
2. Eighty percent of respondents said they knew of data leakage incidents in their organizations, and half said they experienced "frequent" incidents of leakage.
3. However, 84 percent of participants said they had "moderate" to "no confidence" their security controls and audits could adequately secure confidential files.
4. The fear of data leakage leaves many information security experts wary of adopting cloud-based storage and collaboration services, with more than 90 percent indicating this to be the case.
5. The most common data security controls were email gateway/proxy and data loss prevention technologies, followed by file encryption and usage control software.
6. "Our survey findings clearly show a gap between file security policies and practices and the efficacy of technical controls in place to monitor and enforce compliance to the existing policies," said David Monahan, research director of risk and security management at Enterprise Management Associates, which conducted independent research for the report. "This lack of capability to control unstructured data as it moves through its lifecycle will not only yield more data privacy breaches but will impact the adoption of advanced enterprise and cloud content management systems."
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