Expert Articles
‘Reputational Damage’ the Biggest Email Security Concern for UK Public Sector
Reported by zivver.com
By Rick Goud, CIO & co-founder at Zivver
We recently commissioned a ‘Secure communications in healthcare and local government 2020’ survey to investigate the data security challenges and cyber risks UK public sector organisations face when communicating and sharing information via email and file transfer. With the end of the Brexit transition period fast approaching – and changes to data protection regulations including the UK DPA and EU GDPR, therefore, inevitable – this topic is both important and timely.
To assess the current secure communications landscape, insight agency Opinion Matters interviewed over 250 public sector professionals for the survey. Respondents ranged from CISOs, Information Security Managers, Data Protection Officers and Chief Privacy Officers to IT Security Compliance Managers, Chief Risk Officers, Business Continuity Managers and IT Directors – all working in the healthcare and local government sectors, in organisations employing 500+ people.
Key survey findings included:
These results indicate a real and urgent need for public sector organisations to review and update current security practices, requiring technology that is simple to introduce and use, to avoid disruption to employees’ productivity.
The secure communications technology we have developed works with existing email systems – such as Outlook (Desktop and Microsoft 365) and Gmail – meaning that employees do not need to change their usual ways of working. It also provides non-intrusive alerts to support employees in making the right decisions when handling sensitive information, helping them to avoid making the most common types of data leaks such as emailing the wrong person or using ‘CC’ instead of ‘BCC’. This is critical as such leaks can be costly to public sector organisations – due to non-compliance with the GDPR and DPA, for example – and can also cause harmful reputational damage.