New vendor research released at the Infosecurity Europe event points to a high level of anxiety among firms about the effects of a data breach.

McAfee’s new report, DataGate: The Next Inevitable Corporate Disaster?, surveyed over 1400 IT professionals globally and found a third believe a major data breach could put their firm out of business.

But despite these fears, respondents said they spend on average only 0.5 percent of the IT budget on data security, while 60 percent said they had suffered a data loss incident in the last year.

The low budget allocation could be explained by the fact that data security is a more subtle problem, which cannot be treated in the same reactive way as the discovery of a new vulnerability, according to McAfee security analyst Greg Day.

“Because there are no breach laws in the UK a lot of it stays quiet here, too,” Day added.

In related news, new research from encryption specialist PGP Corporation found that fear of brand damage is the main driver for using encryption in over half of UK firms, but only nine percent said they had an enterprise-wide encryption strategy.

"The recent spate of UK data breaches has brought the problem of securing information on devices such as laptops into stark relief,” said the firm’s Jamie Cowper. “When these stories break, they can quickly tarnish company brand, damage consumer confidence, and cause serious headaches for IT and executive management.”