Customers in the United States rank retailers, government agencies and telecommunications providers as the most likely sectors to compromise their personal data within the next year, according to the results of a new survey by Unisys [UIS].
“Organizations that hold consumers’ personal data have a major challenge maintaining public confidence that they safely protect private information,” Dave Frymier, vice president and chief information security officer at Unisys, said in a statement. “While hackers will always find their way into an organization’s network, enterprises can protect high-value data through basic precautions like patching and sharing threat intelligence as well as using advanced security technologies like micro-segmentation.”
The 2015 Unisys Security Insights Survey shows 44 percent of Americans believe a cyber security breach of a retailer is likely within the next year while only 19 percent believe such a breach is unlikely. The survey also says that 39 percent of Americans believe such a breach of a government agency is likely while 29 percent think it’s unlikely.
“Concern about unauthorized access in retail is high, as consumers seem to be less trusting of retailers owing to recent high profile data breaches at several retail chains, including the likes of a leading general merchandiser and a dominant home improvement specialist,” Unisys says. “The perceived threat of a data breach in the next 12 months is also relatively high among government agencies, most likely a result or recently reported cyberattacks.”
For the telecom sector, 35 percent of those surveyed believe a data breach is likely and 25 percent believe it’s unlikely, the survey shows.
Of the remaining sectors that were the focus of the survey, Americans believe the likelihood of a data breach in healthcare is 28 percent, airlines 25 percent, banking and finance 24 percent, and utilities 21 percent.
Unisys says the survey is a “snapshot” of the nation’s perceived sense of security, providing “a statistical measure of consumer concerns to enable organizations make more informed security decisions.” Research for the survey was done by Lieberman Research Group.
The survey also looked at perceptions on the use of biometrics to strengthen authentication for smartphones, finding that 38 percent of respondents believe biometrics bolster security, 37 percent don’t know, and 25 percent saying no. The survey says men have higher confidence than women that biometrics would strengthen security of smartphones.
Unisys says that a robust security strategies should employ multifactor authentication with authentication coming from various biometric techniques such as face recognition, face matching, fingerprints, voice recognition, and vein structure in hands.