Feeling insecure

A recent survey commissioned by management and security software vendor CA shows that just 8% of Americans feel very confident in the ability of U.S. retailers, government agencies and banks to protect their information.

The number seems incredibly small and points to a trend that would indicate that more and more consumers worry about transacting business online. Yet at the same time it also seems more and more transactions are being conducted online. The CA 2008 Security and Privacy Survey, conducted on behalf of CA by The Strategic counsel, involved a total of 400 telephone surveys performed among a random sample of the U.S. general population aged 18 to 65.

CA executives say the number is understandable, considering consumers today know more about IT security than they have in years past. And this knowledge also causes senior IT executives to consider data breaches that compromise confidential consumer information more costly to a company than external attacks such as worms and viruses. Nearly 80% of the consumer group cited loss of trust and confidence, damage to reputation and reduced customer satisfaction as consequences of security and privacy breaches suffered by the businesses and government agencies with which they deal.

"It makes sense that customer confidence is not high because now more than ever consumers know more about computing, the Internet and the public breaches that companies have experienced," says Lina Liberti, vice president of CA Security Management.

Another story that surfaced this week discussed the organization of cybercriminals into a sort of online Mafia, in which groups of hackers and malicious programmers have bonded together to profit from calculated efforts. This would seem to further diminish any feelings of online security for most consumers learning more about how these criminals can't be tracked to a specific location and therefore cannot be penalized for their crimes.

And at a recent Gartner conference, I heard that it is safe to assume that everyone's personal information that has been shared on the Internet is already in the hands of potential criminals. I found this oddly comforting in a way. If I am using secure practices and working to protect my information and it is still safe for me to assume that those efforts on my behalf and on the behalf of my employer and companies with which I do business aren’t enough, then why worry myself about something that seems out of my hands?