Nemertes Impact Analysis

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Hopefully No Match Found: Google Experiences Third-Party Data Breach

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) experienced a data breach at a third-party services
provider. This highlights the need to protect employee and customer data
wherever it's stored. The issue is not if your data will be breached, but when.
Best practices include encryption, strong key management and diligent audits and
policy enforcement. In Nemertes' Security and Information Protection
benchmark, 29% of participants do not yet conduct regular internal audits of
their security systems. There is still room for improvement.

Impacts:

Enterprises: Implement regular internal audits and extend security policies
(and audits) to include any third-party providers that have access to employee
data.

Vendors: The opportunity for third-party providers is to adopt security best
practices including ISO 27001 and SAS70 to make data protection a market
differentiator.

Investors: Encryption is the common thread for data privacy. High profile
breaches increase the interest in companies, including: nCipher (LON:NCH) and
privately held CipherMax, GuardianEdge and SafeNet.

http://www.nemertes.com/products_services/research/benchmarks/nemertes_benchmark_security_and_information_protection
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Stolen-Google-s-employee-records-/0,130061744,339290305,00.htm

Ted Ritter, Research Analyst