Organizations in Mexico and Brazil exposed to data threats

This edition of the 4th annual report extends previous findings in the global report with detailed findings for Mexico and Brazil about perceptions of threats to data, rates of data breach failures, data security stances and IT security spending plans.

The results show that 87% of Mexico-based companies and 84% in Brazil feel vulnerable to data threats. 65% in Mexico and 62% in Brazil had experienced a past data breach, indicating that there are good reasons for this fear. 

The main external threats identified were attacks by cybercriminals out for financial gain at 31% for Mexico and 45% for Brazil. These security related issues come with considerable costs, with 65% in Mexico and 73% in Brazil increasing spending to protect data.

Top selections for the most dangerous insiders are executives with 58% in Mexico and 54% in Brazil, as for privileged users, the results registered 53% in Mexico and 51% in Brazil.

Organizations are planning to use sensitive data within cloud environments at much higher rates than the average across the world, and are worried about it, with 80% of enterprises in Mexico and 79% in Brazil very or extremely concerned about potential exposures from use of sensitive data in cloud environments.

Lion’s share of companies is also planning to implement newer security tools that are more effective at protecting data even when other defenses have been compromised. These include tokenization (44% for Mexico, 54% for Brazil), application encryption (48% for Mexico, 50% for Brazil) security event and information management (SIEM) systems (50 for Mexico, 45% for Brazil) and privileged user access management (36% for Mexico, 30% for Brazil).

Tina Stewart, Vormetric VP of marketing emphasized the fact that low levels of spending on data security controls and outdated investments in IT security technologies that are less effective at protecting data, are putting their organizations at risk.