There is a slight uptick in demand for our services, which I’ve put down to more aggressive marketing on our part. However – industry analysts have some interesting takes on which companies invest in data loss prevention.  Not surprisingly – regulated industries (telecom, finance) buy DLP, unregulated (retail/manufacturing) and small-medium sized business don’t buy DLP. What they’re missing are pharmas – that need to protect intellectual property like proprietary manufacturing recipes.

In a  survey that touched 1500 organizations, CompTIA claims severity of data breaches is going up slightly.  This is at odds with the Verizon Business data breach report by the way. “While most U.S. respondents still consider viruses and malware the top threat, more than half (53 percent) attributed their breaches to “human error,” while only 47 percent attributed them to technical malfunction.”
Last week, Forrester Research published a study called “Data Security Challenges and Technology Adoption in 2008”. “Although 88 percent of the respondents said they consider data security a “challenging issue,” some 40 percent of respondents said they had no interest in, no plans for, or no knowledge of emerging tools for information leak protection” .  Forrester concludes that heavily regulated industries — such as finance, insurance, utilities, and telecommunications — are already implementing DLP at a fairly high rate, while retail and manufacturing are staying on the sidelines for the most part.