Companies 'must protect data due to EU regulations'

Companies across Europe have been advised to pay greater attention to IT management issues following new regulations that may be brought in soon.

David Gibson, director of technical services at IT firm Varonis Systems, has highlighted reports suggesting that the European Commission is planning to bring in fines for companies that are found to have lost private data.

These penalties could be as much as five per cent of global turnover, which could potentially make a serious dent on companies' profit margins, making it essential to take more precautions over data security.

Mr Gibson observed that the biggest data risk does not come from hacking attacks but instead from overly permissive security, a lack of audited access and an overall lack of structure to archives.

"It's good to see the European Commission supporting us in tackling this very real data security problem," he added.

This comes after Viviane Reding, justice commissioner for the EU, suggested this week that data security overhauls are essential due to the changes to the sector that cloud computing has brought about.