A New Study On Data Privacy Reveals Information About Cybersecurity Efforts

The exponential growth of remote work has increased cybersecurity challenges for organizations and governments alike, as well as privacy concerns for workers and consumers. 

A study revealed by Cisco shows that most organizations around the world were unprepared for this increase, accelerating the adoption of technologies to work securely from any location and device. 

• Six in ten organizations have had more than half of the workforce telecommuting during the lockdown, and 37% expect to maintain this trend.
• 61% have experienced an increase in cyber-attacks of more than 25% since the start of the pandemic, and almost all (96%) have had to adapt their cybersecurity policies.
• 85% of organizations consider cybersecurity extremely important or more important than before the pandemic, and 66% believe they will increase investment in cybersecurity.
• Secure access is the top challenge for remote work (62% of respondents), followed by data privacy (55%) and policy control and enforcement (50%).
• One in two organizations believe that securing endpoints - including business laptops and personal devices - is the biggest challenge.

Workers and consumers are concerned about the privacy of teleworking tools and are skeptical when asked if companies are doing everything necessary to keep their data secure. However, they demand little change in privacy requirements, although they do demand greater transparency from companies in how they use customer and employee data. Cisco's second annual Consumer Privacy Survey reveals that:

• Six in ten respondents are concerned about the privacy of remote collaboration tools.
• Although 57% agree to share health data with the company to maintain a safe work environment, less than half would admit to being monitored and only 37% would allow information about infected individuals to be disclosed.
• Half (48%) feel that they cannot effectively protect their data today, and the main reason is that they cannot find out what companies are doing with it.
• 56% feel that governments should play the main role in protecting consumer data.

It wasn’t only consumers and companies that faced new challenges, but governments too, both local and federal. The legislation was accelerated to suspend the requirement that notary services must be executed in person. 

Notarization services are a particularly interesting topic as notaries deal with the most sensitive data and any data breach could have dire consequences. But secure, encrypted video conference tools have resulted in no cases of security breaches and made remote notarization possible.

Electronic notarization is not yet widespread, only 29 states in the U.S. legalized it, and internationally no other country has yet adopted any legislation regarding it. But governments are notorious to be the slowest adopters of new technologies and the pandemic has paved the way for them to open a debate about personal data and data protection.