Private, highly-sensitive employee information, including banking details, human resource files and personal healthcare records, is at risk, network and endpoint security vendor Sophos said, citing results of its recent survey.
While many companies take the security of their customer data seriously, employees are not protected to the same level, Sophos said.
The survey revealed that 31 percent of the companies surveyed admit that employee bank details are not always encrypted.
The survey polled 1,700 IT decision makers from mid-sized businesses in the United States, Canada, India, Australia, Japan and Malaysia, about their encryption habits, concerns and plans.
It further showed 43 percent of the companies holding sensitive employee HR files don’t always encrypt them, and nearly half of those that store employee healthcare information, around 47 percent, fail to consistently encrypt these records.
Of the U.S. companies surveyed that do use encryption, only 79 percent claim to always secure employee bank details, making it the most advanced of the six countries.
By comparison, 48 percent in Japan fail to consistently encrypt employee bank details, making their employees the least protected.
Sophos survey also revealed that company data remains at risk as well. Nearly 30 percent of all organizations surveyed fail to always encrypt their own corporate financial information, and nearly 41 percent inconsistently encrypt files containing valuable intellectual property.
The percentage is higher in the U.S. where 62 percent of organizations cite the need to secure proprietary data as a key driver to encryption.
Cloud data security is also driving encryption adoption. More than eight in ten companies, or 84 percent, expressed concern about the safety of data stored in the cloud.
Nevertheless, while 80 percent are using the cloud for storage, only 39 percent encrypt all files stored in the cloud.
The U.S. leads all six countries with a propensity to encrypt all files in the cloud with 48 percent of those surveyed in America doing so. Malaysia is at the opposite end of the spectrum with only 17 percent of businesses surveyed encrypting all files in the cloud.
Arya MM
