Dasera, a leader in data security posture management (DSPM), today announced the release of The State of Data Risk Management 2024 report. The report unveils a significant disconnect between perceived and actual data security, with 63% of organizations believing their security measures are effective despite a record-breaking number of data breaches in the last year.
“How organizations handle and manage personal and sensitive data is under increased scrutiny and tightening standards,” said Ani Chaudhuri, CEO & Cofounder, Dasera. “Despite this, our report found that many organizations overestimate their security measures, leading to significant corporate risks like reputational and financial losses. As attacks become more sophisticated and targeted, organizations must proactively assess and secure their data security posture to close the gap between perceived security strength and the reality of breaches.”
Dasera researchers analyzed how data risk perceptions and actual preparedness against breaches fluctuate across different industries and uncovered the nuances of data security ratings and an organization’s tangible preparedness for cybersecurity threats.
Key Findings:
Data Security Challenges
- Top Threat Concerns: The top four threats concerning organizations are data breaches, ransomware, insider threats, and misconfigurations.
- Compliance Efforts: 72% of organizations use audits, in-house legal teams, compliance software, and external consultants to ensure compliance.
- Perceived Effectiveness: Most organizations view their data security strategy as effective, with 44% considering it somewhat effective and 19% rating it as very effective.
Adoption of Data Governance Tools
- Data Cataloging Tools: 27% of organizations have implemented data cataloging tools reflecting proactive data management and security measures.
- Data Hosting and Storage: 50% of data stores are cloud data platforms, signifying substantial cloud service adoption for data management.
- Monitoring and Access Control: 60% of organizations implemented a role-based access control system, showing the need for structured access management.
- Data Usage Tracking: 38% use manual and automated processes to classify sensitive data, showing the importance of accurate data categorization in enhancing security.
- Data Tagging and Security Principles: 58% describe their approach as effective, underscoring challenges in enforcing minimal access rights to secure sensitive data.
Industry-Specific Insights
- High Confidence: Information Technology and Financial Services show the most confidence in their data security strategies.
- Challenges: The government sector faces more challenges and less confidence in its data security measures.
- Unique Observation: Interestingly, healthcare is the only industry where no organization rated its data security strategy ineffective.
The survey underscores the importance of adopting integrated and automated data security strategies to address significant challenges. The prevalence of manual, homegrown, often undefined processes and a lack of awareness and understanding among executives and departments highlight the critical need for strategic alignment and automation in data security.
To effectively navigate the complex and evolving data risk landscape, Dasera advises organizations to implement comprehensive discovery and classification, adopt a holistic data governance framework, leverage advanced monitoring and analysis tools, prioritize risk management and compliance, educate and train staff, embrace a zero-trust security model, and optimize security investments with scalable solutions.
To download the full report, visit https://resources.dasera.com/the-state-of-data-risk-management-2024-report.
Methodology
Dasera surveyed over 300 respondents from various sectors, including education, professional services, information technology, government, health and life sciences, and financial services. Larger organizations, particularly those in financial services and health and life sciences, rated their data security and governance practices more positively. In contrast, education and more minor organizations encountered more challenges, resulting in lower ratings. Despite high confidence levels reported amongst specific sectors, 2023 breach data from sources such as the Verizon Data Breach Report, Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC), Kroll’s 2023 Data Breach Outlook Report, and Firewall Times report a record-breaking year for breaches, showing an apparent discrepancy between security breaches and an organization’s perception of its security posture.
About Dasera
Dasera is a platform that provides data security posture management (DSPM) services that automate the governance and security controls for your company’s structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. It ensures the safety of your data throughout its entire lifecycle in multi-cloud, on-prem, and hybrid environments. Dasera also provides continuous data usage and storage visibility and quickly detects risks. It aligns data security strategies with your business objectives.
For more information, visit dasera.com or contact us at info@dasera.com.
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