Trust in security of customer data highest among financial firms

Consumers trust financial institutions more than other organizations to keep their private data secure, new research shows.

The global study, “Privacy Uncovered: Can private life exist in the digital age?” explores consumer attitudes towards company stewardship of personal data and the damage that data breaches can cause to the business of the companies affected.

The report was written by the Economist Intelligence Unit, a unit of the Economist Group.

Sponsored by Beazley Plc, the research reflects the views of more than 750 consumers worldwide and includes commentary from regulators and business leaders on the study’s findings.

By a large margin, the consumers polled perceive the most secure organizations to be banks and other financial institutions. More than 41 percent of respondents perceive them as “very secure,” 49.8 percent as “moderately secure,” and only 6.6 percent as “not secure at all,” the report states.

“We keep on hearing how banks in the U.S. and Europe have lost consumers’ trust,” said Paul Bantick, who heads Beazley’s Technology, Media and Business Services team in London. ”In some respects that may be the case, but when it comes to stewardship of private customer data, the research suggests they still enjoy a far higher level of trust than other organizations.”

More than 32 percent of respondents in the study say they “strongly agree” with the statement that, in the event of a data breach, they would cease to do business with the organization concerned. When they were asked whether they had personally suffered a data breach in the past two years, 23 percent of respondents said they had.