Executives say--but don't act like--data security is vital.

• Position: INFO SECURITY

The majority of U.S. executives say data security is vital to their organizations, but their actions don't show it. In fact, it's estimated that only about a third of U.S. data is completely secure, and information security is low on the list of risks to businesses. According to NTT Com Security US, which conducted the survey, these findings "show an alarming disconnect between policy and behavior ... among business leaders."

Even though 65% of respondents said data security is vital to their organizations and characterized consumer customer data as the most important, very few reported that all customer data is completely secure. Protection of intellectual property (IP) fared much better: 56% said their IP is completely secure. Respondents said they were more concerned about losing market share to competitors, the lack of employee skills, and decreasing profits than data security. This likely explains why only 10%-12% of their IT budgets is spent on data security.

The survey finding also showed that senior executives "fail to acknowledge long-term damage--both in terms of time and money--that a data breach might...