Study Reveals Majority of Visual Hacking Attempts are Successful
Organizations around the world are at risk of sharing highly sensitive information through visual hacking in business office environments. This risk was revealed in the 2016 Global Visual Hacking Experiment, an expansion of the 2015 Visual Hacking Experiment conducted in the United States by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by 3M Company. The global study included trials in China, France, Germany, India, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom. The combined results found that sensitive information was successfully captured in 91 percent of visual hacking attempts globally.
The global experiments involved 157 trials with 46 participating companies across the eight countries. They exposed low-tech hacking methods as a significant risk to corporations around the world. The findings revealed that organizations need to create awareness among employees on protecting data displayed on device screens, as 52 percent of the sensitive information captured during the experiments came from employee computer screens.