Majority of consumers stop doing business with company at a data breach

The impact of cybercrime is considerable. Much bigger than I thought. The majority of consumers (66%) do not seem to be inclined to shop or do business with an organisation from which personal data has been stolen. As a result, the damage caused by a data breach continues for longer than expected.

Particularly retailers (62%), banks (59%) and social media (58%) are banned from a data breach. This is due to the fact that 70% of consumers believe that the responsibility for data protection lies with organisations. In fact, 93% blame the organisation for a data breach and consider taking action against them. This is shown by the Customer Loyalty survey of Gemalto, the world leader in digital security.

Little trust

Only a quarter of consumers feel that the protection and security of personal data is taken very seriously. They mainly do not trust social media (61%) and banks (40%) when it comes to protecting their data. 91 percent believe that the applications and websites they currently use pose a risk to the protection and security of personal data.

That is why 82 percent of consumers want organisations to take more online security measures. This is sometimes necessary in order to bring the internal policy of companies more in line with crucial issues such as the European privacy legislation GDPR. In order to meet this requirement, data security must also be in good order.

Many victims

A quarter of the respondents were victims of fraudulent use of financial information (26%), personal data (19%) and identity theft (16%). In addition, two-thirds are worried because they think they will be the victim of a data breach. Despite this fear, consumers do not intend to change their own online behaviour. For example, more than half (55%) of consumers say they use the same password for different accounts.

Dirk Geeraerts, identity and data protection expert at Gemalto, states in a statement that it is important for organisations to work with data security. Stimulating good consumer behaviour is important in this respect. Despite the fact that an organisation is seen as responsible by the consumer, passwords really do lie partly with the consumer himself. This means that as an organization you protect your most valuable assets, including customer data, with encryption and two factor authentication,” says Geeraerts.