Study: Holiday Shoppers Value Security and Privacy Efforts of Retailers

New research from CompTIA finds that many Americans are willing to give retailers the benefit of the doubt if a security breach occurs – as long as they have taken significant measures to secure data.

According to its survey of nearly 1,000 consumers, the suburban Chicago-based trade association says approximately 21 percent of respondents believe retailers are doing a good job protecting personal information. Meanwhile, about 18 percent feel that online retailers are doing a poor job of protecting users’ data and personal information.

“We have lost our focus on deploying impactful policies that actually make consumers safer and instead have gone to the default of ‘my regulation is better than yours,’” said Elizabeth Hyman, executive vice president of public advocacy for CompTIA. “It is time for industry and government to come together to find new national privacy and security solutions that better educate consumers and enable them to easily determine if a company is protecting their data and information – or not.”

When it comes to privacy and security policies, consumers put a high value on effort and investment with 54% saying that companies who take every reasonable precaution to protect user data should be judged differently than those companies that are more lax.

Channel Impact^®
The data demonstrate potential security opportunity for channel partners serving the online or brick-and-mortar retail spaces.