Last week 8,400 British students about to enter university received an e-mail from the Student Loans Company (SLC), a government

admin2013-06-26  44

问题     Last week 8,400 British students about to enter university received an e-mail from the Student Loans Company (SLC), a government body, reminding them to complete their application forms. It came with an attachment that listed all 8,400 e-mail addresses. The outfit later issued a sheepish apology and promised an "internal investigation". At best, such data breaches make a small dent in a firm’s reputation and the whole thing blows over, as it did SLC’s case; at worst, though, companies lose the trust of their customers and also have to pay large fines. Sony, an ailing Japanese electronics giant, may never quite recover from breach last year, when hackers stole the personal details of over 100m customers.
    The explosion of data in recent years was always going to make data breaches more common, as two recent reports make clear. The first is an annual publication commissioned by Symantec, a maker of security software, and carried out by the Ponemon Institute, a data-protection researcher, to look into the cost of data breaches in several countries. Now in its seventh year, the report had some good news for Americans. Calculating the costs of investigations, compensation, customer support and projected loss of revenue, it found that the average cost to a company per breached record declined for the first time since the numbers are tracked. The figure dropped from $214 in 2010 to $194 in 2011, suggesting that companies had become better both at preventing and responding to breaches.
    Europeans fared less well. The cost rose from £ 71 to £ 79 ($113 to $126) in Britain, from ¢98 to ¢122 ($ 130 to $ 162) in France and from € 138 to ¢ 146 in privacy-conscious Germany. In all four countries, around two-thirds of all breaches were the result of technical faults and malicious attacks. But the remaining third was down to negligence. They could, in other words, never have happened.
    The second study goes some way to explaining why they did. Iron Mountain, a data-management company, commissioned PricewaterhouseCoopers, a consultancy, to assess the risk of information loss faced by mid-size European companies based on their attitudes to managing data. The report looks at 600 businesses in six European countries across different sectors. It found that businesses tend to regard data protection issues as the responsibility of IT departments. More than half thought that technology can solve the problem. Only 1% of the businesses surveyed believed it concerned all employees—and thus required a change in behavior.
    Both reports conclude that is precisely what is needed. Symantec’s study found a correlation between having a senior executive in charge of information security and lower costs of data breaches. " It has to start at the top," says Marc Duale, Iron Mountain’s head. The best solution need not be the most expensive—employee-awareness programs and staff training can be more effective than pricey IT upgrades. Malicious attacks may be unavoidable but silly mistakes are unforgivable.
Which of the following statements is true according to the first report?

选项 A、The problem of data breach in America is less severe than that in three European countries.
B、The majority of data breaches in America are caused by uncontrollable factors.
C、America spends more in preventing data breach than its European counterparts.
D、America made progress in data protection while its European counterparts went backward.

答案D

解析 根据第二段和第三段的内容,美国公司为数据泄露事故付出的平均代价第一次出现了下降,由2010年的$214降到了2011年的$194,这显示出美国公司在数据保护和数据泄露处理上变得更加得心应手。而第三段中列举了几个欧洲国家的数据保护平均花费,全部都出现了不同程度的上涨,这说明这几个国家在数据保护方面不进反退。[D]正确。[A]错误,虽然美国在数据泄露上付出的平均代价出现了下降,但是金额却要比欧洲国家高,这说明数据泄露的问题在美国依然很严重。[B]错误,第三段中作者明确指出,在包括美国在内的四个国家中,大约有三分之一的事故是由于疏忽大意导致的,而并非像[B]所说的,大部分都是由于不可控因素导致的。[C]错误,调查的是在泄露事故发生之后公司付出的代价,而非数据发生前公司所投入的防范费用,因此美国和欧洲国家在这方面的开销无从比较。
转载请注明原文地址:https://jikaoti.com/ti/KYsRFFFM
0

最新回复(0)