Companies are losing increasing amounts of money because of data theft. And the cause behind most of those breaches may be surprising to HR pros.
The average cost to companies per incident of data theft in 2008 was $6.65 million, compared to $6.3 million in 2007, according to a recent report by PGP Corp. and the Ponemon Institute.
The total costs include loss of customers, legal fees and lost productivity while dealing with the issues.
The cause of those costly incidents? More than 88% were blamed on “insider negligence.”
In other words, those companies’ employees were to blame. Many cases involved actual theft by employees, the misplacement of laptops and other equipment containing sensitive files or insecure electronic data transfers (for example, an employee sending information to his personal e-mail address to view it at home).
To prevent those expensive mishaps, HR and IT should work together to create effective policies governing the use of confidential customer and company data.