Insurance industry winning battle of data breaches
The insurance industry is ahead of other sectors when it comes to data breaches, according to a new report by global information firm Crown Records Management and Censuswide.
The survey, which questioned IT decision makers at UK companies with more than 200 employees, found that only 17 percent of insurers had been hacked, a far superior result than other sectors, such as facilities management (40 percent).
However 55 percent of UK insurance firms still admitted their company had lost sensitive data.
Ann Sellar, business development manager at Crown Records Management, said: “These survey results show the insurance sector is ahead of its rivals and that is good news. But nevertheless the overall figures should still be a wake-up call because the importance of protecting customer data is higher than ever.
“Not only because of potential fines for data breaches (which will soon increase when the EU General Data Protection Regulation is ratified) but also because of growing public awareness.
“It takes on average 20 years to build a reputation but just five minutes to ruin it with a data breach and then up to two years to rebuild it. So businesses need to look at the way they protect their information, understand where the threats are and start putting robust processes in place to protect their customers. If they don’t I can only see the number of data breaches increasing in the next few years.”
Only 8 percent of insurance IT decision makers have lost sensitive data and just 6 percent say they have accidentally left sensitive documents somewhere – the lowest across all sectors.
Sellar added: “Although hacking is big news we estimate 80 per cent of data breaches come from human error. So it is encouraging to see the low numbers of those in the insurance sector being careless with sensitive data.
“All businesses need to ensure they are doing everything they can to reduce this risk through staff training, robust procedures and working with approved, specialist suppliers to give them the best chance of protecting their data.”
