Three fourths of data breaches occur by human, system errors in India: Symantec

Symantec and Ponemon Institute have released the findings of 2013 Cost of Data Breach Study: Global Analysis which finds that three fourths of data breaches in India occur caused by human and system errors such as mishandling of confidential data, lack of system controls, and violations of industry and government regulations. Heavily regulated fields including healthcare, finance and pharmaceutical incurred breach costs 70 percent higher than other industries.

 Anand Naik, Managing Director-Sales, India & SAARC, Symantec said, "Given organizations with strong security postures and incident response plans experienced breach costs 20 percent less than others globally, the importance of a well-coordinated, holistic approach is clear. Companies must protect their customers’ sensitive information no matter where it resides, be it on a PC, mobile device, corporate network or data center."

 Larry Ponemon, Chairman, Ponemon Institute said, "Eight years of research on data breach costs has shown employee behavior to be one of the most pressing issues facing organizations today, up 22 percent since the first survey."

Together human errors and system problems account for 64 percent of data breaches in the global study and 74 percent of breaches in India. Companies in India were the most likely to experience a data breach caused by a system glitch or business process failure. Consolidated findings show that malicious or criminal attacks cause 37 percent of data breaches and are the most costly data breach incidents in nine countries.

U.S. and U.K. companies received the greatest reduction in data breach costs by having a strong security posture, incident response plan and CISO appointment.