A survey released by Compuware Corporation and the Ponemon Institute showed an overwhelming majority of organisations, surveyed risk compromising critical information by using actual customer data for the development and testing of applications.

The report found that 62 percent of the companies surveyed, use actual customer data instead of disguised data to test applications during the development process. Of those companies using actual customer data, 89 percent use customer files and 74 percent use customer lists. Examples of the live data often used include employee records, vendor records, customer account numbers, credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and other credit, debit or payment information.

While organisations may think that test data is immune from privacy threats because testing occurs in a non-production environment, these environments are less secure than production environments. Testing data may be exposed to a variety of unauthorized sources including in-house testing staff, consultants, partners and offshore personnel. In fact, 52 percent of respondents outsourced their application testing, and 49 percent of those respondents shared live data with the outsourced organization.

"For many organisations, large customer data files represent an easy, cheap source of data to use when testing applications, but this process introduces a huge element of risk to the challenge of maintaining the integrity of sensitive information, particularly when third parties and offshore resources are involved," said Dr. Larry Ponemon, Chairman and Founder, Ponemon Institute. "This study points to a need for greater awareness and accountability over how sensitive data is used within organizations. Common practices as they relate to all uses of live data must be evaluated to assess risk, and safeguards implemented to ensure data security."

The Test Data Insecurity: The Unseen Crisis report, also found that half of the companies using actual customer data for testing purposes do not take steps to protect that information. Other significant findings included:

• 50% of respondents have no way of knowing if the data used in testing had been compromised.
• 41% of respondents reported they do not protect live data used in software development.
• 38% of respondents were unsure if live data their organisation used for testing or development had been lost or stolen.
• 26% of respondents said they did not know who was responsible for securing test data, 26% believed the development organisation was responsible and 21% said the testing organisation was responsible, suggesting no clear ownership for sensitive test data.

"Few people realise how much is at risk during the development and testing of applications," said John Williams, Senior Vice President, Product Solutions, Compuware. "All commercial organizations--not just health care and financial institutions--have an obligation to protect the privacy of consumer data. To eliminate the test data security risk, an increasing number of our clients are using our Test Data Privacy solution that provides them with an automated, repeatable process for creating safe and effective test data."

The study, conducted between July 2007 and August 2007, used a proprietary web-based survey platform with the results derived from the responses of 897 IT professionals with an average often years experience. The survey was commissioned by Compuware Corporation and fielded by the Ponemon Institute.