Among in-house counsel, 27% admit data breaches have occurred in their organization.

The Association of Corporate Counsel’s (ACC) Chief Legal Officers (CLO) 2015 Survey provides insight into the statistics and growing concern for CLOs and GCs of data breaches in their organizations.

According to the ACC, the 2015 Survey was completed by 1,289 individuals in 46 countries. The Survey revealed that 27% of CLOs admitted that their organization had experienced a data breach within the last two years. The Survey further showed that a whopping 50% of companies with over $4 billion in revenue experienced a data breach. Companies in Canada were most likely to report data breaches, and the health care industry led all industries in data breach prevalence at 49% since 2012. What does that mean? One out of two health care organizations and businesses with revenue over $4 billion have experienced a data breach and the trend is only increasing.

The conclusion? 82% of those surveyed ranked data breaches as their top issue of concern in the coming year.

The Survey confirms that CLOs and GCs are struggling with data privacy and security within their organizations and that risk assessment and management around data privacy and security must be a top priority in the coming year. Robinson+Cole’s Privacy and Data Security Team can ease those concerns and help with risk management strategies.