Londoners unaware of new data security laws

A new survey from security firm Cyber-Ark Software has revealed that 65% of London’s city workers are unaware of the implications of serious data breaches under new legislation.

The survey of 500 city workers found that two-thirds of respondents did not know that under new legislation, coming into force on 6th April, businesses can be fined up to £50,000 for serious personal data losses.

Mobile devices represent the greatest risk to organisations according to the poll, which found that 64% of workers carrying consumer data on their mobiles but over half that number - 38% - admitting that they do “nothing” to protect it. In a classic blunder, only half of the respondents use any password at all on their mobile devices, and only 12% encrypt the sensitive information on them.


Adam Bosnian, vice president of products and strategy at Cyber-Ark, said that the problem all boils down to education and training: "People increasingly understand the need to protect their data, but for some reason it is not always top of the CISO's priority list, and it should be," he said.

He went on to add that educating people to be more responsible with data is key, and also that organisations should control privileged users and accounts to avoid data breaches.

Here at Inatech, we couldn’t agree more; human error and misjudgement is one of the biggest risks of the security of systems, and our installations always come with extensive training for staff on new systems.