The UK public wants to be informed whenever an organisation suffers a data breach, a new survey by LogRhythm has found.
The survey also revealed that consumers believe more needs to be done to punish companies that lose sensitive information, calling for breach notification laws that make it mandatory for all breaches to be reported to all customers – irrespective of scale.
In the survey of 1,000 consumers, conducted for LogRhythm by OnePoll, two-thirds of respondents said that there should be legislation forcing organisations to declare any data breaches experienced, with the same percentage stating that customers should be told immediately.
While current EU legislation requires only affected customers of telecoms operators or ISPs to be notified, 64% of respondents reported a desire for all customers to be informed, regardless of whether their data was comprised. On a similar note, the majority of respondents feel that not enough is being done to uniformly punish organisations that lose sensitive data.
"The barrage of data breaches this year has clearly impacted the way in which consumers perceive the security of their personal information, which points to an urgent need for organisations to up the ante on data protection," said Ross Brewer, vice president and managing director for international markets at LogRhythm.
"EU data privacy laws go some way toward mandating full breach disclosure, but the feedback from consumers is that much more needs to be done – across industries far beyond the telecoms sector."
When it comes to consumer confidence, the results were equally bleak, with 48% believing it inevitable that their data will be compromised by hackers at some point.
Echoing the results of a similar survey in November 2012, social media and gaming websites were deemed the least trusted keepers of personal information, while healthcare providers and financial services institutions were favoured for security.
