The majority of businesses don’t have a solid system for tracking sensitive data, or a mature patch management process, according to new survey of IT professionals released by Trustwave.

In 19 percent of companies there was no control or tracking of sensitive data at all, said respondents to the 2014 State of Risk survey, which was conducted by a third-party on behalf of the Chicago-based security firm. And 63 percent said their process for managing this data was not fully mature.

“That is a very scary statistic,” said Phil Smith, Trustwave’s SVP for government solutions and special investigations.

“If you don’t know where your data is — your sensitive data, your critical data, data that you use to operate your business — then how can you protect it?”

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here