News release: ‘Informatica Corporation, the world’s number one independent provider of data integration software, today announced the availability  of a new research report by the Ponemon Institute LLC, entitled, The State of Data Centric Security. Based on a global survey of more than 1,500 IT and IT security professionals, the study reveals how organizations understand and respond to data security threats in today’s information-everywhere world. According to the study:

• Not knowing the location of sensitive or private data is the foremost concern of today’s IT security practitioners, topping hacker attacks, malicious employees and concerns around compliance.
• Organizations are in the dark regarding sensitive data, withonly 16 percent knowing where all their sensitive structured data resides, and a miniscule seven percent knowing the location of all sensitive unstructured data, including data in emails and documents.
• Automated sensitive data-discovery tools would reduce risk and increase security effectiveness. The vast majority of respondents (nearly 75 percent) believe their security activities would benefit from an automated solution for discovering the locations and relationships of sensitive and private data. However, only 40 percent of organizations use an automated solution, and only 22 percent of those use it to discover sensitive data in emails and files.”