Businesses are becoming lazy in securing their data

The increased number of data breaches over the past one year should be enough to worry many organisations around the world. Last year's statistics by Gemalto point to nearly 1.4 billion data breaches annually. 

Apparently, many organisations will only take appropriate measures to secure their data after a data breach has already occurred. An obvious example is that a majority of IT experts employed by many organisations still believe that perimeter security is still effective at keeping hackers out of their networks. This is according to the findings of Gemalto's latest report on data security.

Under Investment in data security

Major organisations around the world are still under-investing in modern technology that can adequately protect their data. The Gemalto survey which involved interviewing over 100 IT decision makers worldwide showed that 94% of them believe in perimeter security as an effective way of keeping hackers out of their network. However, 65% are not sure if their data could still be protected if the border security is breached.

Focus is on perimeter security

Although perimeter security is a point of interest, there is a lack of clear understanding of technology and data security. Many businesses continue to prioritise perimeter security believing that it is effective against sophisticated cyber-attacks. 76% of the respondents indicated that their organisations had increased investment in perimeter security technologies including firewalls, antivirus, and content filtering as a way of protecting their data against external attackers.

Despite this advancement, nearly 70% of those interviewed believe that unauthorised users could still access their network hence rendering the perimeter security ineffective. The statistics indicate that there is lack of confidence in the solutions being used to protect organisational data. The lack of confidence is high among the IT experts whose organisations have suffered a perimeter security breach in the past one year. The reality of the situations gets worse when you consider the fact that only 8% of the data breached was encrypted.