Security industry's biggest worry is data leakage, says survey

News that a large organisation has lost data has become increasingly common. This week it emerged that the personal details of a million banking customers were viewable on a computer which was sold for £35 on eBay.

Last week the Government revealed that information on every prisoner in England and Wales had been on an unencrypted memory stick which had been lost by a private sector contractor.

A survey by the organisers of the Infosecurity Europe conference has found that 69% of the workers in that sector they asked rated the most significant issue they faced as 'how to prevent data leakage from within an organisation'.

The 99 respondents to the survey were asked to rank their top five security priorities. The second most important one was how to make the equipment and connections of remote workers secure. The third was ensuring the compliance of workers with regulations.

Infosecurity Europe's Mike Barwise said that workers in the sector had correctly identified risks but were not being practical enough about what might mitigate those risks.

"The respondents are clearly aware of business risk from major exposures such as data leakage and insecure remote working, but still seem to be seeking magic bullets – practical solutions including future proof security, standards compliance and secure development do not rank highly as priorities," he said. "It seems the business/technical divide is as great as ever, and remains the limiting factor in corporate information security.”

Barwise said that security was still too often not the top priority as systems are being built. "Even where security has been considered at the inception of a project, lack of security understanding, inadequate systems analysis, over-optimistic budgeting and time pressure on the part of both business and developers can lead to it being pared away as the project progresses," he said.

"It comes to be seen as an overhead, a drag on progress and a nuisance, and as a result is relegated further and further towards the back row as priorities are revised. The result is most often a disaster waiting to happen."