Privacy breaches causing business instability

Report warns that losses could be the tip of the iceberg

PRIVACY BREACHES are fast becoming a pandemic infecting business stability, according to insecurity company Symantec.

The outfit claims that 79 per cent of Australian businesses know they have lost sensitive information about themselves or their customers.

The survey of nearly 200 businesses with more than 100 employees shows that 40 percent of companies that lost information acknowledged six to 20 losses in the previous year. Eight per cent admitted 100 or more instances. Data losses cost one industrial company $8 million.

The biggest cause is lost laptops and mobile phones.

Craig Scroggie, regional managing director of Symantec, said that the survey on risk is not hype. Of course the fact that it will help Symantec which flogs software to monitor documents and protect data, is just a side issue.

In Oz companies can pretend that they have not lost any data, so the problem might be a lot worse than the public thinks.

Bill Hay, a Queensland detective superintendent and expert on computer crime, told the Sun Herald that Australia was not any safer than the rest of he world and the problem was going to get a lot worse.

Data theft will boom because of profits in individuals and companies trading sensitive information to obtain personal identities and corporate secrets, he said. µ

L'Inq

Sun Herald