PCI, for example, mandates that a firewall be installed to protect cardholder data. But Worstell says the standard doesn't address whether a company has processes to ensure that once a piece of technology is installed, it's regularly upgraded or monitored to see how effective it is. "If security stops at PCI, that's not enough," she says. Hannaford Supermarkets experienced the theft of customer credit and debit card data from December 2007 to last March, a period when the grocery chain was certified compliant with PCI, "the highest security standards required by the credit card industry," the company says.

Neither is it enough if security monitoring stops within your own four walls. But that's exactly what's happening. A dirty secret uncovered in this year's poll reveals that companies don't know, and apparently don't care to know, what happens to their data once they hand it to another company. Get ready to be disturbed.

Outsourced Out of Sight, Security Out of Mind

Here's one of the most worrisome of our findings this year: A skimpy 22 percent of respondents keep an inventory of all the outside companies that use their data.

If that isn't enough to make you wince, we've got more. Just 37 percent of our survey respondents require third parties handling the personal data of customers or employees to comply with their privacy policies. Even fewer—28 percent—perform due diligence of those third parties to understand how or whether they safeguard information. Yet 75 percent of respondents profess at least some level of confidence in the effectiveness of their partners' security. Isn't that rosy?

Yet due diligence on any outsiders that handle your data is more important than ever as companies parcel out corporate work of all sorts to third parties, says Tom Bowers, managing director of Security Constructs, an industry analysis firm specializing in trade-secret protection technologies. In that respect, pharmaceutical companies can teach other industry verticals a great deal, he says.

Bowers was senior manager of global information security operations at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals for seven years before starting Security Constructs. Bowers's security group subjected potential Wyeth business partners to detailed scrutiny of their security practices. He had to. "We were responsible for protecting intellectual property no matter where it sat. Here or with an outsourced clinical trials company in Dublin. Wherever."

Ken Harris, CIO at Shaklee, says every company should make sure its outsourcers have the same security as its own—or better. "You vet the security and disaster recovery of your outsource providers in the same way you would vet your own operation," he says, adding, "It does take time and resources."