The risk of corporate data thefts will be increasing in the next three years. Companies' own employees, especially middle managers, are the biggest risk in this sense. Corporate data are being stolen mainly on USB drives. Thieves have even more chances because only a minimum of companies has sufficiently secured the access to their sensitive data. These are results of the CEE Data Theft Survey 2012 by KPMG involving 44 leading companies operating in the consumer and retail markets in nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
61% of the companies surveyed see stealing data on portable devices as the biggest risk. Only 45% of the respondents, however, use protective software that would reduce internal use of such media and only 16% monitor the flow of information on them. On the contaryr, almost all companies are protecting themselves from external attacks by using firewalls and antivirus programs (98%), restricted access rights (89%) and e-mail filters (82%).
In 64% of cases, people working directly in the company represent the biggest danger of data thefts. The risk of theft is even higher when employees feel the possibility of losing their jobs. Competitors are the second most common source of danger (45%). Customers and suppliers are the least probable thieves (9%).
As far as the content of the data being stolen, corporate strategies and plans are the most often targets of data thieves. At consumer markets, information about business processes are being stolen, too.
Detailed results of the CEE Data Theft Survey 2012 are available for download at the KPMG website here.
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