British consumers remain most fearful about banking online and information security as a factor in deciding which bank to use, according to new data released today from a company offering information security and information destruction services’ eighth annual ‘State of the Industry Report’.
When asked about security concerns relating to common interactions with businesses, consumers pinpointed online banking as the most concerning, with 61 percent fearing that their confidential information is at risk. This compares to smaller percentages for booking a hotel online (55 percent), staying in a hotel (49 percent), buying a car in person (43 percent) and providing information to a lawyer (32 percent).
Data protection is deemed important to 86 percent of people when they are deciding which bank to use, which stood higher than other various forms of physical data. The other most significant forms of written data recorded in the study included data needed for choosing a lawyer (79 percent), a place of employment (76 percent), dealing with a car dealer (70 percent) and making a hotel booking (69 percent).
The annual study covers information and data security risks threatening UK enterprises and small businesses and includes survey findings from the Shred-it Security Tracker. Ipsos conducted a quantitative online survey of three distinct sample groups in the UK – 1,000 Small Business Owners (>100 employees), over 100 C-Suite Executives of large organisations (<250 employees) and over 1,100 consumers/employees. Comment Neil Percy, Vice President Market Development and Integration EMEA, Shred-it, said: “In spite of all the checks and balances and rigorous login security in place, people are still concerned about online banking. Recent data breaches like that at TSB may exacerbate these fears. We should all be considering how data security is vulnerable in other contexts, however. When you think about the level of personal and financial information you might write down in a car dealership, for example, and how it is then stored in digital and physical format, you begin to see there is risk all over the place. If we could all see that as consumers, that might improve businesses’ data handling and reduce fraud.” Visit www.shredit.co.uk.
