COSTA MESA—Corporate executives are concerned about the effectiveness of their company’s data breach response, according to a new study on data
breach preparedness released by Experian Data Breach Resolution and the Ponemon Institute.
The second annual study, Is Your Company Ready for a Big Data Breach?, found that executives have these concerns despite taking the basic steps to be prepared.
“While more organizations have data breach preparedness on their radar and have developed a response plan, a majority of companies are not putting the support and resources behind having it truly be effective,” said Michael Bruemmer, vice president, Experian Data Breach Resolution, in a release.
Bruemmer added that a ‘checklist response plan’ alone doesn’t mean you’re prepared.
‘There should be an incident response team in place that practices the plan and ongoing investment from the C-suite to ensure technologies are up-to-date, external breach experts are secured, and selection of an identity protection product for affected customers is determined prior to an incident to ensure a quick and smooth response,” he said.
Key study findings:
- With data breaches making headlines globally, awareness for data security is at an all-time high and more companies are preparing with a data breach response plan.
- Data breaches are becoming ubiquitous, with almost half (43%) of organizations surveyed having suffered at least one security incident—up 10% from 2013. As a result, more companies have a data breach response plan in place (73%), up 12% from 2013.
- Confidence among senior executives to manage a data breach remains low, despite increased security investment and having incident response plans in place.
- Sixty-eight percent of respondents felt unprepared to respond to a data breach and 30% felt their data breach response plan was ineffective.
- Executives recognize what needs to happen to improve their incident response. The vast majority of executives (70%) surveyed want more oversight and participation from board members, chairman and CEO for data breach preparedness.
- Seventy-seven percent suggested more fire-drills to practice data breach response would help them be more prepared; 69% indicated additional funding as a major need to improve response activity.
“Compared to last year's study results, survey findings show encouraging signs that organizations are beginning to better prioritize data breach prevention, but more needs to be done," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute. "Companies should be careful of not becoming complacent because they have a response plan in place or just completed a security audit. Preparedness requires ongoing maintenance and diligence.”