Survey identifies top data security technologies

That's chief among the findings of an independent data security survey of more than 1,100 multi-national IT security practitioners that focused on security mandates. Amichai Shulman, CTO of Imperva, which commissioned the survey, gives the example of web application firewalls, which were among the top five rated technologies for reducing the number of data breach incidents. Others technologies included network data loss prevention, full drive encryption, server/endpoint hardening, and endpoint data loss prevention. "Data security is an emerging practice requiring practitioners to navigate numerous mandates, threats and technologies," says Shulman, "This survey will help security teams identify what their peers find successful and hopefully help make improvements to their own strategy and operations." The survey also found that malicious intentions are behind 62% of data theft. Meanwhile, insider breaches accounted for 33% of incidents, and hackers made up 29%. The remaining recorded breaches were all accidental. Nearly two-thirds of organisations either didn't know if they suffered any data breach incidents, or stated that they didn't experience any. Of those that did, 46% saw a decline in breaches while 27% reported the same number of breaches from the previous year. Additionally, the survey found that enterprise data security initiatives have accelerated data security as data theft and monetisation become the ultimate goals for hackers and malicious insiders. On the other hand, intense regulatory scrutiny continues to drive many data security initiatives. In fact, the survey suggests that 88% of IT professionals believe that PCI-DSS was the primary driver for their information security program.