New research from UK legacy modernisation vendor Micro Focus has revealed that global organisations are failing to secure confidential data during application testing, despite the vast majority admitting they had suffered a data breach within the last 12 months.
Micro Focus quizzed over 1,350 practitioners involved in application development and testing across the UK and the US at companies with revenue ranging from $10m to over $20bn.
The majority (70%) claimed that they do not have data masking techniques in place during any form of testing and that they use customer records, employee records, credit cards and other business confidential information in application development and testing.
Companies also admitted using customers records for testing on a regular basis, with 64% saying testing is a weekly occurrence and 90% using it on a monthly basis.
That fact that 79% of respondents admitted to suffering a data breach within the last 12 months has apparently not stopped them from testing with unsecured confidential data.
“Given the recent high profile of data breaches across the world and also the frequency with which testing takes place, it seems unbelievable that organisations have still not taken the necessary steps to ensure their data is secure during this regular process,” said Stuart McGill, CTO, Micro Focus.
“In this difficult economic time, the last thing organisations want or need is to experience a significant data breach that can leave their own, or worse, their customers’ confidential information damaged or leaked,” McGill said. “Companies need to act now and ensure they have the data masking capabilities in place to guarantee their data is watertight during development and testing.”
