Many users don't want to deal with breached businesses

We get plenty of reports on people being asked if they'd continue doing business with organizations that got breached. Sometimes, the reports are positive, saying people understand all the hard work organizations put into securing their data and that, sometimes, breaches can happen.

On other days, these reports claim people would walk away from such companies, never to look in their direction again. Today is one of those days. A new report by The Internet Society, called 2016 Global Internet Report, says 40 percent of users would not do business with a company that suffered a data breach.

In the same report, organizations are given five tips on how to reduce the number and impact of data breaches globally: put users at the center of solutions, increase transparency about the risk, prioritize data security, increase accountability and increase incentives to invest in security.

"One of the key questions raised by this report is why organizations are doing so little to protect their customers’ data?", says Michael Kende, economist and Internet Society fellow who authored the report. "Everyone knows that data security is a major issue for both consumers and businesses, yet companies are not doing everything they could to prevent breaches".

"According to the Online Trust Alliance, 93 percent of breaches are preventable. And steps to mitigate the cost of breaches that do occur are not taken -- attackers cannot steal data that is not stored, and cannot use data that is encrypted. This status-quo isn’t good enough anymore. As more and more of our lives migrate online, the cost and risk of a data breach is greatly increased, and will lead to lost revenues and a lack of trust".

The full report, which also tackles the issue of IoT, can be found on this link.

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