UK businesses shunning encryption tech?

Fewer than half of UK companies use encryption technology to secure their data.

Despite the lack of encryption, UK IT managers claim their corporate data is safe and almost two-thirds (65 per cent) said the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) data breach will not change their IT spending priorities, according to a survey by Check Point.

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Only 48 per cent of those surveyed have deployed encryption within their organisations and a further 12 per cent did not even know if encryption was in place at all.

The survey also revealed 85 per cent of IT managers support the mandatory notification of affected parties in the event of a data breach, something which the silicon.com Full Disclosure campaign is calling for.

More than one-third (36 per cent) of respondents thought immediate dismissal was appropriate for parties causing data leaks on the scale of the recent HMRC loss, according to the survey of 140 senior IT staff in UK public and private companies.

Two password-protected CDs containing information from the child benefit database were sent unrecorded and unregistered by a junior HMRC official through courier TNT to the National Audit Office on 18 October but never arrived and have not been found.