Preventing Data Breaches from occurring

Abstract

You are a data security officer at a reputable high street vendor. It has transpired that a memory stick containing the email addresses of several customers has been lost by a member of staff. The customers whose data has been lost are extremely angry, as they are now being targeted by huge amounts of unsolicited spam email. Head Office have tasked you with investigating the cause of this data breach, and which behavioural antecedents contributed to it. Your task is to determine the underlying reasons as to why the breach occurred, rather than simply what happened at the time. It is possible that it occurred accidently, but you are unsure at this point. A member of staff could have been targeted and their memory stick stolen.