Organizations are investing more than ever in cybersecurity, yet data breaches and other security incidents are continuing to increase in both number and size. Our survey identified several key factors that can help account for this. First, while security professionals successfully mitigate security issues at some of the six stages of data lifecycle, they often overlook other stages, leaving their organization’s content vulnerable. In addition, security professionals generally know very little about what data they have, how sensitive it is, where it is stored, and who has access to it.
Without deep visibility into internal processes and user activity, they struggle to answer the four foundational questions of security: Who? What? When? Where? Until they gain a deeper understanding into how data lives during all stages of its lifecycle, it will keep slipping through their fingers.
The data storage stage turned out to be the most challenging stage for ensuring data protection. Nearly a quarter (24%) of organizations reported they had discovered data outside of secure locations, and it took them days (43%) or weeks (23%) to discover the incident. These figures represent the highest incident rate and the slowest detection time of all the stages.
