You may have a real threat to your organization's data security perimeter you may have never considered, much less taken action to prevent. This threat is not the result of some sinister activity or technical exploit of your network -- it comes from your employees performing what would generally be perceived as a benign act.
The use of online survey software to collect feedback from customers is growing consistently as companies search for ways to take the pulse of their customer base. As a result, there is a growing roster of companies that offer survey solutions, ranging from simple survey tools to comprehensive enterprise feedback-management solutions that help companies build, manage, and analyze survey activity.
Inviting customers to take a survey and collecting results means customer data is exposed. The vast majority of online surveys use e-mail to send invitations to potential respondents. This requires customer data in the form of mailing lists and other information be loaded onto the servers of the survey solution provider. Responses to the survey are also stored on these same servers and are accumulated over time for analysis. Depending on the nature of the survey, the responses result in detailed profiles that include customer information such as:
* Opinions
* Preferences
* Buying habits
* Demographics
* Contact information
Taking a survey is an act of trust by the respondent, who provides this data trusting that it will be used appropriately and handled securely.
Unfortunately, this may not be a valid assumption. As noted, there are many survey solutions on the market, some of which are very inexpensive. However, choosing a low-cost survey solution could mean that your data -- both the customer data from the organization and the data from the responses is stored on an unprotected server. Since many of these tools use the software as a service model, the survey...

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