Retail owners beware, users are taxing the lack of security measures by not shopping on your online stores anymore

Dec 12, 2015 22:35 GMT  ·  By

A recent study shows that 85% of a store's customers will refuse to shop at a company after a data breach, confirming that clients do penalize businesses more than a government regulator could ever do.

The study, carried out by Vormetric and Wakefield, contains data from 1,000 US users and highlights that customers are starting to prioritize the security of their finances and online identities, much more than they did in previous years.

According to the survey, there are four major reasons a customer would leave their favorite retailer after a data breach: →    If money was taken from their checking account (67% customers said they would leave their retailer) →    If unauthorized charges appeared on their credit card (62% customers said they would leave their retailer) →    If personal information was leaked (57% customers said they would leave their retailer) →    If their credit score was damaged (54% customers said they would leave their retailer)

Putting all these reasons together, Vormetric says that 85% of the 1,000 survey respondents would leave their favorite retailer for one of the above four reasons.

Companies are aware of the risk of being breached

"It's been two years since major retail attacks made 'data breach' a household word," said Tina Stewart, VP of marketing at Vormetric. "The revelation of a major data breach following the Black Friday weekend in 2013 was the starting point for two record years of data breaches that have followed.  Events since then have demonstrated just how much financial and reputational havoc a data breach incident can wreak on beloved brands."

This opinion is also shared by 800 business leaders, who were also surveyed on this exact topic in the 2015 Vormetric Insider Threat Report.

This report shows that 89% of these executives expect a data breach in their near future, and 93% of them are looking into maintaining or increasing their IT and security budgets for the next year because of this fear alone.

In most cases, managers pointed the finger towards insecure databases, file servers, cloud servers, and BYOD mobile devices, but executives are also aware of insider threats like users with privileged access, contractors, and business partners.

This change of attitude towards data breaches is also explained by almost daily news of a data breach occurring somewhere in the world. For example, a site like databreaches.net has new entries detailing such incidents every day, and sometimes more than one per day.

For more details on this topic, check out the 2015 Vormetric Insider Threat Report.