In a nod to the ubiquity of the problem, some 60 percent of respondents indicated that they had experienced a data breach within the past year with only six percent of the IT professionals surveyed claiming that their firms had completely avoided the problem for at least two years.
Sixty-one percent of respondents to the McAfee survey said that most data leakage incidents are carried out by insiders, and 23 percent said they believe those leaks are executed with malicious intentions.
Despite the widespread nature of the problem, enterprises are still refusing to sink major dollars into technologies aimed at preventing data loss, according to the report. On average, respondents said their companies spend one-half of one percent of their overall IT budgets on data security.
That number stands in stark contrast to the perceived price tag of dealing with data leakage incidents, with respondents estimating that breaches involving customers' personal information cost an average of $268,000 merely to inform those whose records may have been exposed.
Survey respondents also indicated that the total annual cost of data leakage events at their respective companies was an average of $1.82 million, including the value of the lost data itself and the amount of money needed to support credit monitoring services for people whose data is affected. Only 23 percent of those involved in the report were willing to estimate such a total.
Interestingly, IT pros participating in the study rated the potential loss of intellectual property and financial information as of greater concern than the loss of customer data, despite all the negativity being attached in the public domain to incidents such as the TJX breach.
"That result may seem surprising, especially because we had retail, financial services, and health care companies involved in the research, but the truth is that credit card providers still take most of the losses on identity fraud," said Carl Banzhof, vice president and chief technology evangelist at McAfee. "When you consider that people could be walking out with new product schematics or software source code, you get an idea why these concerns are rated as such."
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