Data loss prevention market on upswing

A survey sponsored by Dimension Data and performed by analyst firm IDC has found that the market for data loss prevention products will be growing, reports eWeek.com. The survey discovered that 57 percent of the 400 organizations polled intend to invest in data loss prevention software during the next year.

The survey said that the primary concern for businesses regarding data loss comes from insider threats. Forty-five percent of the respondents believed data leakage was more likely to occur due to employee error than external hackers with malicious intent (15 percent). In fact, 85 percent declared data loss via external hacking to be "very unlikely."

"The challenge when protecting an organization from internal data loss is that traditional defenses are designed to face outward, at the perimeter of a network, whereas the inside of the network remains relatively free of security controls," said Neil Campbell, global general manager of Security Solutions for Dimension Data, in a statement. "Compounding the problem, security awareness training initiatives for employees often go unfunded because organizations find it difficult to demonstrate a return on investment for such training."

Campbell told eWeek.com that companies must take a "holistic" approach to protecting their data, and create automated, technical barriers to both human error and malicious intent.

The survey suggests that companies are headed in this direction, and shifting their investment away from point solutions to a broader outlook. The survey found 59 percent planned to invest in IT security audits and 52 percent in consulting services. "This indicates a growing realization that reacting to security incidents, and ad-hoc acquisition of point technologies without regard to how they dovetail with others, is more costly and less effective than planning an integrated strategy," according to Campbell.

For more on the data loss prevention market:
- check out this eWeek.com article

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