Data Breaches and IT Security Spending Rise in Parallel
Thales, a leader in critical information systems, cybersecurity and data security, announces the results of its 2017 Thales Data Threat Report: Mexico and Brazil Edition, issued in conjunction with analyst firm 451 Research. This year’s report found that 78% of Mexican respondents claim to have experienced a data breach at some time in the past – the highest of any country polled in the 2017 Report. Almost all (90%) of respondents believe their organizations are vulnerable to data threats.
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Compliance not effective enough deterrent
Violations of Mexico’s Federal Law on the Protection of Personal Data held by Private Parties often lead to high fines and penalties. In fact, the regulation’s fines can grow up to 320,000 times the Mexico City minimum wage – and fines at or near this limit have been levied. Despite the financial burden, in the last year alone breaches among Mexican organizations were up more than three-fold (to 34%) from the previous year (10%) and yet 78% of respondents claim to have increased security spending (compared to 65% last year).
Budget misallocation, advanced technologies also complicating matters
Decisions about security spending have also added to the data breach stress. Ninety-one percent of Mexican respondents selected network security as ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ effective at preventing data breaches and 62% of respondents plan to increase spending on network security However securing data-at-rest came bottom of the list with only 44% planning to increase spending in this area.
While 99% of respondents claim they will use sensitive data in an advanced technology (cloud, Big Data, IoT and container) environment, most of the data will be unsecured, as 75% of respondents believe sensitive data is being used in these environments without being secured.
Peter Galvin, VP of strategy, Thales says:
“Over two-thirds of Mexican respondents have experienced a data breach which indicates there needs to be an increased focused on data security. The good news is that respondents indicated they believe encryption is necessary in order to meet privacy requirements and enable digital transformation. For example, 74% claim encryption is the top choice for addressing data privacy and sovereignty issues. Fifty-five percent also list encryption as their top choice for increasing container adoption”.
Mexican organizations interested in protecting existing legacy data sources while also taking advantage of advanced technologies should strongly consider:
- deploying security tool sets that offer services-based deployments, platforms and automation;
- discovering and classifying the location of sensitive data within cloud, SaaS, big data, IoT and container environments; and
- leveraging encryption and Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) technologies for all advanced technologies
Please download a copy of the new 2017 Thales Mexico and Brazil Report for more detailed security best practices.