Report on Data Security by Forrester and RSA

RSA Security sponsored a study by Forrester Consulting on data security in companies and the results are truly fascinating, till now CSO, CIO, CISO, CxO where more towards compliance but now their focus is also on securing data. You can check out the complete report here.

Some highlights of the study are:

• Flexibility to make information availiable to business
• Access to data by remote employees is a top concern.
• Demands for collaboration and data exchange with partners.
• Fifty-five percent of respondents have data security policies that are either outdated.
• Twenty-seven percent indicated that the policy they have is rarely enforced.

Conclution of the Study:

• Organizations want to protect business, not just comply.
• Expanding encryption is an important priority.
• Streamlining key management will bring down organizational barriers.

There are too many things that go into CSO's mind but most of them don't get implemented or enforced and a very important factor in data security is users. Users are plain stupid and it becomes really impossible to control users actions but you can always keep a tight restriction from the beginning so that users don't get room to make mistakes.

-- Anish