A survey of almost 400 global enterprise IT and business leaders has found that just 18 percent of organisations are concerned with PRISM and as little as 15 percent are worried about weak data protection laws in the EU.
Yet, the same survey, commissioned by content management and collaborations solutions provider Intralinks, found that a huge 90 percent of companies are primarily concerned about the accidental mishandling of data. Not only that, over half of these organisations are blocking employee access to online file sharing services like Dropbox in an attempt to protect their corporate IP.
These results shed an interesting light on the future of data privacy, and it's clear that the PRISM scandal has not resonated with businesses at all. Instead, there needs to be more emphasis on creating stringent IT policies – policies which are designed to mitigate the risks presented by data sharing outside of the corporate firewall.
Richard Anstey, CTO EMEA, Intralinks says "It needs to be noted that blocking consumer-grade applications will not suffice when trying to prevent the accidental mishandling of data - employees can still access them through mobile devices. Businesses need the appropriate technology behind them to help enforce IT policy."
If you are interested in speaking with Richard Anstey about the survey results, as well as about the future of data privacy in Europe, please let me know and I'd be happy to arrange this.