Be careful with your data.
According to a poll of 1,000 American software developers and business professionals, 29% of them use real customer data when testing and improving company software.
This reckless usage increases the person’s exposure to a data breach, according to the research, which was commissioned by Tonic.ai and conducted by OnePoll.
45% of the poll’s participants said they have experienced a data breach within the last five years because they were using a consumer’s data in insecure environments.
Places that have been hit the hardest by data breaches? The financial services industry (60%), construction (57%), education (54%), food and beverage (53%) and law practices (53%), all of which have all been hit with the most data breaches within the last five years.
The most common way data breaches happen according to the poll are internal theft (34%), accidental leaks (27%) and hacking incidents (24%).
Businesses are being reckless with customer data.
Here are some common ways data breaches happen.
On average, it takes four weeks for companies to recover from a data breach as companies deal with insurance premium increases (28%), civil lawsuits (27%), regulatory fines (22%) and media embarrassment (21%).
88% of data breach victims say it can temporarily delay the company from functioning.
What isn’t super good news for consumers is that the study found that 74% of companies use sensitive customer data on a daily basis.
Places that use this sensitive data the most? Education industry (83%), financial services (82%), food and beverage (80%) and construction (79%).
The survey stated that one way to prevent customer data breaches is to use software testing environments to monitor the data businesses are using.
But if you have been steered away from ever giving a company your information ever again, there was a reassurance in the study mentioning that 50% of businesses use data that has been de-identified.
