McAfee comments on Lords e-Crime report

The House of Lords science and technology committee has released a report calling for a overhaul of current UK Internet security practices.

The report admits that e-Crime stats are hard to quantify, but a recent report by McAfee and analyst firm Datamonitor found that: 50% of businesses believed that it would cost over $100,000 (£50,968) to notify their customers of a data breach that exposed personal information and 30% believe that a major breach could potentially put them out of business.

Greg Day, security analyst for McAfee commented on the Lords report: “Full disclosure is a positive step in the long term as it provides customers with the confidence that they will be informed should their personal information be breached/lost. Equally [it] adds pressure to businesses to ensure that they have the appropriate security measures in place to prevent data breaches occurring to them. Short term consumers may see an increase in breaches as full disclosure takes effect. It would be important to educate them that this is not a sign of things getting worse, but more visibility of what is and has already been happening behind closed doors.”

With regard to the liability of security vendors, Day said: “It would be very difficult to hold vendors responsible for breaches, as it really comes down to how solutions are implemented. You would have to ask, ‘Did they have it configured correctly, updated and maintained?’ Every business has different IT security requirements depending on their business and IT footprint. A security vendor supplies businesses with the tools,but it is down to the business to use them correctly.”