Egress today (23 February) publishes its Data Loss Prevention Report 2021, which shows that 95% of organisations suffered data loss in the past year. Over eighty percent (83%) of respondents said that they had experienced email data breaches. But perhaps most surprisingly, 35% of IT leaders polled said they have faced litigation from data subjects.
The report was conducted by independent organization Arlington Research among 500 IT leaders and 3000 remote-working employees in the financial services, legal and healthcare sectors within the UK and the US. Of those polled, 40% said they have experienced client churn from data loss.
The report focuses heavily on the impact of remote working, finding that 74% of IT leaders believe that remote working will make it more difficult to prevent data leaks via email in the future. More than half of IT leaders (59%) reported an increase in email data loss linked to the pandemic.
Speaking to editor Caroline Hill in this 10 minute video, Egress’ CEO Tony Pepper explains that a big part of the explanation for the data loss is the more challenging working environment at home, which often leads to more mistakes (either in misaddressed emails or sending the wrong attachment to the right person.)
You can watch that video here:
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Pepper explains that clients are increasingly concerned about email security, too – with 62% of IT leaders reporting that they’d experienced an increase in clients asking whether they have email DLP in place. “It used to be a competitive advantage but now it’s just table stakes,” Pepper tells Legal IT Insider.
Egress is headquartered in the UK with offices in Toronto and Boston. It uses machine learning to prevent human error (and protect against malicious behaviour) over email. Many of its clients are in the government and healthcare sector but law firm clients include Thomson Snell & Passmore and Ward Hadaway and Pepper says that interest from the legal sector is growing rapidly.
You can download the report here: https://pages.egress.com/whitepaper-dlpresearch-02-21
