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Easy Guide to Comprehensive IT Security Strategies for SMBs
High-End Endpoint Security, Data Loss Prevention and Portable Device Management at a Reduced Scale
July 2008

Given recent legal measures taken by courts or governments, the costs of loosing private data is easier to perceive. In the United States for example, in January 2006, the Federal Trade Commission charged commercial data broker ChoicePoint Inc. a settlement fee of 15 million dollars for leaking consumer data and violating consumer privacy rights (Federal Trade Commission, 2006). Also, in the first months of 2008 the state of California has passed a bill obliging companies where data breaches occur to disclose the full extent of such incidents to those affected. It is probably only a matter of time until other states and countries enforce similar harsh measures which entail high costs needed to both comply with disclosure requirements and identity management.

Lost confidential data comes with a price in the UK as well. A Ponemon Institute survey from 2008 shows that the average price a company pays for a lost private record is of £47, while the average total price paid by a company exposed to data breaches is of £1.4 million.

Is Stealing Information Difficult?

In this day and age, definitely not. With the proliferation of small yet powerful storage devices, theft is becoming quite common. In 2005, the Yankee Group reported that almost 37% of businesses surveyed held USB drives responsible for contributing to the disclosure of company information. Nearly two thirds of the leaks resulted in some disruption to the business units involved, according to the analyst firm. More recently, Symantec’s Internet Security Threat Report released in early 2008 showed that stolen or lost hardware, from laptops to USB sticks and portable hard drives were the most common cause of data breaches in 2007, outranking malicious software.

Also, given the ease of catching data thieves, the process of breaching a company’s security system and stealing private records is far from complicated. Earlier this year, Canada’s largest telecom provider, Bell Canada, has recovered the personal data of about 3.4 million customers. The thief has been capture after being overheard when trying to randomly sell the information to several individuals.

Is Data Loss that Common?

According to most sources, it is becoming more and more common and is mainly related to portable storage devices. Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report Volume XI shows that, in 2006, theft or loss of a computer or data storage medium, such as a USB memory key, made up 54% of all identity theft-related data breaches. Symantec’s report for the next year, 2007, showed that lost hardware was one of the first to causes of data breaches, along with theft.

A more recent survey performed by the Ponemon Institute and commented by Computerworld.com in June, 2008, shows some of the largest and medium-size U.S. airports report close to 637,000 laptops lost each year, most of them misplaced at checkpoints and during security checks. That’s about 10,000 laptops lost at airports each week. Moreover, laptop theft is quite common in the U.S according to Mike Spinney, a spokesman for the Ponemon Institute.

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