6th Annual Global Security Survey 2009 - Deloitte

Protecting what matters

The 6th Annual Global Security Survey, which benchmarks IT security and privacy in the financial services industry was published in February 2009. Some of its findings include: As in previous surveys, respondents recognize that people are both an organization’s greatest asset as well as its weakest link. But security vigilance is even more important in hard economic times, when the increased stress levels can lead people to behave in atypical ways. Even though both internal and external security breaches at financial institutions worldwide have fallen over the past 12 months, employee misconduct is a growing concern. The growing popularity of social networks and the proliferation of mobile media such as USB keys, MP3 players and PDAs, all cause an extra load on internal and external security. These devices present opportunities for unauthorized download and storage of confidential information in an unprotected medium. This is one of the factors that has contributed to the sudden rise of data protection and information leakage as a top priority for financial institutions—tied at second place with access and identity management. The top three information security priorities of financial institutions are: security regulatory compliance, followed by data protection and information leakage, and access and identity management. In 2008, financial institutions saw a decline in the number of both external (47% vs. 65% in 2007) and internal (27% vs. 30% in 2007) security breaches. The leading drivers for financial institutions to protect the privacy of their clients information are privacy regulatory requirements (79%) followed by reputation and brand concerns (70%).

Download: Sixth Annual Global Security Survey (2032 KB)
Published 4 February 2009