Survey: Breaches don’t change consumer behavior

Bedford, Mass. -- Almost 50% of consumers have fallen victim to at least one data breach and 45% say they are not confident they know all instances of when their personal information has been leaked. However, according to a survey conducted by RSA, the security division of EMC, in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute of more than 1,000 U.S. consumers, in many cases behaviors toward security have not changed.



Forty-eight percent of consumers admit to online shopping on a weekly basis, and while respondents rated security expectations high for activities like online banking and mobile transactions, security expectations for online shopping were low. Even with expectations being low, so many being personally affected by data breaches, and the wave of retail data breaches involving payment card information, 45% of the respondents say that it has no effect on their use of credit or debit cards.



According to RSA's Anti-Fraud Command Center, during the first six months of 2014, 33% of banking transactions originated in the mobile channel, which marks an increase of 20% from 2013 and a 67% increase from 2012. One out of four fraud transactions originated in the mobile channel – showing a significant increase in mobile fraud. Of all of the online activities measured in the Ponemon survey, making mobile payments ranked highest on the list in terms of expectations of security, yet 77% admit to not trusting the security of mobile apps and only 35% say that they always read permissions of apps being downloaded.



Sixty-two percent of consumers express a lack of trust in websites that only require a username and password at login. While seventy-one percent of respondents say they are most concerned about losing their password in a data breach, nearly one-third admits to only having one to two passwords for all online accounts; 69% admit to using the same password for more than one device or site; and only 54% say that they regularly change their passwords. When questioned about preferred authentication methods, a majority of respondents cited software tokens and/or biometrics (voice and fingerprint verification) as the ideal ways to manage identities.



"As the capabilities and convenience of the Internet continue to grow, so does consumer security concerns,” said Brian Fitzgerald, VP marketing for RSA. “The results of the Ponemon Study show that while these concerns are top of mind, behaviors and attitudes of consumers are not changing. It is incumbent upon the industry, to deliver on promises of strong and convenient security methods to help customers take advantage of the Internet while significantly limiting the risk of threats--both simple and sophisticated."