Gemalto research: businesses confident about keeping hackers out, less so on data security

Companies are underinvesting in the technology needed to protect themselves from cyber security threats, according to Gemalto’s fourth annual Data Security Confidence Index, released today (11 July).

Produced through surveying 1,050 IT decision makers worldwide, the index found that 94 per cent believe that perimeter security is quite effective at keeping unauthorised users out of their network. However, 65 per cent are not extremely confident their data would be protected, should their perimeter be breached, a slight decrease on last year’s 69 per cent. Despite this, nearly six in 10 organisations report that they believe all their sensitive data is secure.

The research also found that while 76 per cent of those surveyed said that they had increased investment in perimeter security technologies such as firewalls, IDPS, antivirus, content filtering and anomaly detection to protect against external attackers, two-thirds (68 per cent) still believe that unauthorised users could access their network, rendering their perimeter security ineffective.

Troublingly, 55 per cent of respondents said that that they do not know where their sensitive data is stored, while roughly a third of businesses do not encrypt payment (32 per cent) or customer (35 per cent) data. Should it be stolen, a hacker would be able to use it to commit identify theft, financial fraud or ransom it back to the owner.