There Is A Discrepancy Between The Information Insight Of Mid-Market Companies In Europe And North America And The Protection And Risk Management Of That Information, A Study Has Found.
According to the last years report by Iron Mountain and Pwc, 62 per cent of European and 47 per cent of North American mid-market companies believe their marketing teams have the best skills to extract value from information. However, the research showed that less than one per cent of these firms believe that these teams should have a responsibility for its protection.
Furthermore, the Information Risk Maturity Index revealed that the majority of firms expect the IT security manager to grant free access to marketing and customer-facing teams to help them reach new customers and markets (60 per cent) and improve customer service (80 per cent).
However, in over a third of companies (39 per cent), the responsibility for information security is placed firmly at the feet of the IT security manager rather than the employees with access to the information.
When it comes to the secure management and destruction of company information, the evidence suggests that marketing professionals are far more likely to engage in high-risk behaviour than other job roles.
Examples of high-risk behaviour include taking company sensitive information out of the office to work from home or working on confidential documents while travelling on public transport.
The study found that one in three (35 per cent) marketing professionals work from home two-to-four times a week, more than any other job role reviewed, and that they are the most likely to look at business-sensitive work while commuting on public transport (35 per cent).
Marketers are the employees most likely to send or receive work documents over a personal email account (48 per cent), at times via an insecure wireless network (12 per cent), and often discard documents in their waste bin when working away from the office (28 per cent).
Christian Toon, Head of Information Risk at Iron Mountain, comments on the findings: “Making data accessible for analysis and intelligence is essential for business growth – but the employees who use that data must know how to protect it.
“Our study of European office workers found that just a third of employers provided secure remote intranet access for marketing professionals working remotely.
“It is imperative that organisations recognise the gap between data security in the office and at home and bridge this as a matter of urgency.”
