The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) recently published a report into the most common causes of data breaches in organisations.

The ICO are responsible for ensuring the protection of data held by organisations in the UK and the report highlights how elementary some of the IT security vulnerabilities are.

Organisations may often feel overwhelmed with the task of ensuring data security, but the report shows it is often a basic level of security that is lacking. Most common security vulnerabilities include:

• a failure to keep software up to date
• poor decommissioning of old software and services
• the insecure storage of passwords
• the continued use of default credentials including passwords

When you realise that most of the PCs running Windows XP are still being used even after the date when XP no longer receives security updates from Microsoft, it becomes apparent that it is all too easy to ignore basic IT security steps.

Aside from fines the ICO can impose, most organisations would find it a significant event to suffer a data breach, costing time and money. Simple steps, easily implemented ensure data is safe and continuity is assured.