Consumers demand organizations do more to protect their data, or they will take their business elsewhere in case of a security breach, according to the Unisys Security Index.
Consumers are
increasingly willing to take action against organizations if their personal
information is ever compromised by a security breach, Unisys found.
More than
10,000 people in 12 countries, including 1,000 from the United States, were
surveyed by Lieberman Researcher Group and Newspoll in the latest Unisys
Security Index, released Nov. 2. While there were some variations between
countries, the overall trends of consumers punishing organizations for breaches
by closing accounts or taking legal action was consistent across all 12
countries, according to Unisys.
About 87
percent said they'd change the password protecting the account with the
organization after a breach while 76 percent they would close the account
altogether. More than half, or about 53 percent, of the respondents said
they're willing to sue the organization after the data was compromise. Nearly
65 percent of the respondents said they would publicly expose a company for not
safeguarding personal data in the event of a breach.
"In a
world where communities such as Facebook and Twitter provide the opportunity to
instantly broadcast dissatisfaction to a broad audience, this threat seems more
real than ever before," Unisys said.
Legal action
is becoming more common. A class-action lawsuit was
filed against Sony after attackers breached the
entertainment giant's various cloud services, including
PlayStation Network, Qriocity and
Sony Online Entertainment. The U.S. Department of
Defense was hit with a $4.9 billion class-action lawsuit after computer backup
tapes containing the personal information of nearly 5 million current and
former U.S. soldiers was stolen from health care data provider
Tricare.
The publicity
around the high-profile attacks and the dissemination of private data by hacker
groups over the past year have "elevated the concern" consumers feel
about safeguarding their identity, Steve Vinsik, global security solutions
leader at Unisys, said in a video released in conjunction with the survey
results.
Consumers are
"more willing than ever to take stringent security measures," whether
it's highly complex passwords or biometrics to secure their data online, Vinsik
said, adding that it was "incumbent" upon organizations to come up
with something that is easy to use but makes them more secure.
More than half
the respondents in the United States said they are willing to provide biometric
data, such as facial recognition and fingerprints, to secure their identity
information online. Over 59 percent said they would be willing to use
biometrics at airport security checkpoints or when conducting transactions with
the bank or other financial institutions. The number dipped slightly to 53
percent for users willing to use biometrics in order to receive benefits or
services from government agencies, according to the Security Index.
However, less
than a quarter of U.S. consumers, or 21.3 percent, were willing to use
biometrics to log in to social-networking sites. Younger people were more
willing than older users to use biometrics to access sites like Facebook,
according to Mark Cohn, CTO for Unisys Federal Systems.
There may be a
"perception" among consumers that social-media sites were "less
careful with their data, or that the risk was simply not worth the
reward," according to Unisys.
The latest
report echoed the results from the previous Index from May that found 70
percent of respondents concerned about identity theft.
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