“Over 150 million personal information records have been compromised in breaches of data
security reported to the authorities in the USA during the last two years.”
A Chronology of Data Breaches, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, 2007

The consequences of failing to secure customer data are evident on a regular basis, not only in the trade press, but on national and international news bulletins. Ensuring the privacy of clients’ data is a key requirement for most organizations, and the cost of failing to protect sensitive customer data can be very high. The use of unaltered production data in the testing process presents a number of risks:
• Test environments are not physically as secure as production systems. Sensitive data could
for example be downloaded to laptops which are subsequently stolen

• Employees could misuse sensitive information such as credit card details and engage in
fraudulent activity
• The drive to outsource and offshore application development and testing work means that
organizations will have little control over who gets to see their the test data
• Adverse publicity concerning a breach of privacy can severely impact customer confidence in an organization which can translate into significant loss of business and a fall in stock price

"The average cost per security breach for each reporting company was $4.8 million, and the
average cost per lost customer record was $182, an increase of 30% over 2005."
The Cost of Data Breach, Ponemon Institute, 2007