Sensitive Data at Risk from Internal Threats

Published on Tuesday, 12 June 2012 16:54 Written by TradersHuddle Staff

• Informatica Corporation (Nasdaq:INFA), the world's number one independent provider of data integration software, today announced the availability of an important new research report from the Ponemon Institute entitled Safeguarding Data in Production & Development: A Survey of IT Practitioners. 
• The Informatica-sponsored report reveals the continued vulnerability of sensitive and confidential data due to lack of controls and safeguards to keep unauthorized employees and third-parties from accessing the information.
• Alarming findings across 663 surveyed IT and IT security practitioners include:

• Data compromise/theft remains rampant: 50% of respondents have had data compromised or stolen by a malicious insider such as a privileged user.
• Unbridled DBA access heightens risk: 73% say their database administrators can view sensitive data in clear text mode, increasing the risk of a breach.
• Call centers put sensitive customer data into play: 76% say their call center personnel view, or will likely view, sensitive data such as credit card numbers in the clear.
• Organizations are under-coping: 68% have difficulty restricting user access to sensitive data, 66% have difficulty complying with privacy/data protection regulations, and 55% lack confidence that they would even detect data theft/loss from their own production environments.
• Penalties are high, but budgets are low: Even though the cost of a data security breach is high, only 33% of respondents say they have budgets adequate to reduce the insider threat.

• Where traditional persistent data masking safeguards data by masking, dynamic data masking provides real-time role-driven masking of sensitive data in production and development environments to ensure compliance with privacy regulations.
• Dynamic data masking has emerged recently as a flexible and economical data protection technology that addresses a number of gaps in existing solutions. Survey respondents cite among its most important advantages:

• Customizable access: 67% believe the most important feature of a dynamic data masking solution is the ability to customize what users see based on their unique access privileges.
• Simplicity: 59% say it is to avoid alternative, more intrusive methods such as encryption and tokenization.

• The market's first dynamic data masking solution, Informatica Dynamic Data Masking empowers organizations to cost-effectively address current and future data privacy regulations through a comprehensive mix of real-time data anonymizing, blocking, auditing and alerting in a single environment.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., June 12, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tweet this: New Ponemon Research Highlights Need to Focus On Data-centric Security to Reduce Damaging Breaches http://bit.ly/L46CII #dataprivacy

Supporting Quotes:

• "Insider data security threats, both malicious and unintentional, represent an enormous and expanding risk exposure," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute.  "Widespread outsourcing, cloud computing and CRM call centers all aggravate an already difficult situation. It is clear from this study that organizations need to seek out new and innovative ways to simply and conclusively address the insider security challenge."
• "Dynamic Data Masking ensures that both IT and business users using applications and tools access personal information on a need-to-know basis," said Kobi Hirsh, Partner Communications, Chief Information Security Officer.
• "Informatica enables organizations to cost-effectively augment encryption and other protection measures in order to govern data access for DBAs, call center representatives, service providers, developers and others who might otherwise see data in the clear," said Adam Wilson, general manager, ILM, Informatica. "The Ponemon survey reveals customers are looking for data security to: 1. Safeguard data without impacting database or application code and performance 2. Dynamically mask sensitive information based on the user's privilege level and 3. Cast a protective net across production and near production environments."

Additional Links

• Webinar: Data Privacy and Protection in Production and Development Environments: New Research from Ponemon Institute
• Blog: Where Are the Data Security Weaknesses in Your Cloud Solution?

About Informatica

Informatica Corporation (Nasdadaq:INFA) is the world's number one independent provider of data integrationsoftware. Organizations around the world rely on Informatica for maximizing return on data to drive their top business imperatives. Worldwide, nearly 5,000 enterprises depend on Informatica to fully leverage their information assets residing on-premise, in the Cloud and across social networks. For more information, call +1 650-385-5000 (1-800-653-3871 in the U.S.), or visit www.informatica.com. Connect with Informatica at http://www.facebook.com/InformaticaCorporation, http://www.linkedin.com/company/informatica and http://twitter.com/InformaticaCorp.

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Note: Informatica, PowerCenter and Informatica Dynamic Data Masking are trademarks or registered trademarks of Informatica Corporation in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other company and product names may be trade names or trademarks of their respective owners.

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         Informatica Corporation	
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         Informatica Corporation
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