Security News > 2000 > September > European survey finds most web health sites insecure
http://www.telekomnet.com/news_security/9-14-00_european_survey.asp September 14, 2000 If you were thinking of entering personal data onto a European Web healthcare portal, think again, as a report due out next week says that many healthcare sites across Europe are less than healthy when it comes to their own levels of security. The damning report says that 70 percent of Europe's leading healthcare companies' sites have been found to collect users' personal information in a potentially insecure environment - and are in danger of being hacked into. Clicksure, whose business is Web site certification, has published its findings in "Clicksure Comment," the first in a series of reports due to be published on the company's Web site. This, the first report, will be published in the next few days. For its research, Clicksure looked at more than 500 U.S. and U.K. corporate and government sites across a range of industry sectors and criteria, aiming to identify where they fell down on best practice in the world of e-commerce. Phil Hendey, Clicksure's chief marketing officer, said that 77 percent of Europe's healthcare companies gave their users no rights to withdraw or withhold their consent for any disclosure or use of their personal information. "Healthcare companies hold highly personal and sensitive information on thousands of people," he said, adding that the report found that this information is gathered in a potentially insecure manner and could be accessed by an unauthorized third party. Hendey went on to say that the Internet allows an easy people-to- people (P2P) exchange of information. It is, however, only as reliable and secure as the individuals programming the sites that transmit and receive this data. "This report should act as a warning to companies to tighten up on information security or face a loss of confidence among their consumers," he said. For its research, Clicksure used its best practice auditing product, Discovery Snapshot, to monitor the organizations' Web sites. In use, the product reviews corporate Web sites and rates them against exacting criteria, including privacy, security, information, transaction management, quality, and monitoring. The results, the firm says, enable businesses to see how well they measure up to internationally recognized best practice for e-business, their competitors and e-business in general. ISN is hosted by SecurityFocus.com --- To unsubscribe email LISTSERV () SecurityFocus com with a message body of "SIGNOFF ISN".
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http://www.telekomnet.com/news_security/9-14-00_european_survey.asp