Rob, you make some very valid points. Allow me to address some of your questions:
Our PCI survey was sent to 6,260 IT Managers / Security Managers based in the UK, Ireland, the Nordics & Benelux. These were collated from a number of original sources that formed our contact data, which did include our customer database. In retrospect we perhaps should have stated NE Europe, not European.
144 surveys were started and we used the 65 that were fully completed. As we did not hold company size or other demographic data on many of the records we did not apply random/demographic selection in our targeting. We did however request basic demographic information which we are happy to share:
What is the annual revenue of your organization?
< 10 million 15.3% (22)
11 to 24 million 6.3% (9)
25 to 99 million 8.3% (12)
100 to 249 million 15.3% (22)
250 to 499 million 12.5% (1
> 500 million 42.4% (61)
144/144 answered question
How many employees do you have in your organization?
< 100 12.5% (1
100 499 16.7% (24)
500 999 6.3% (9)
1000 4999 21.5% (31)
> 5000 43.1% (62)
144/144 answered question
Country?
United Kingdom 23
Sweden 4
Norway 3
BeNeLux 23
Denmark 6
59/144 answered question
To a degree the presentation of the data is in the hands of the journalist/blogger/writer, but for our virtualization survey due to complete today we will look to include demographics etc. in the released information.
This is still a VERY small sample to be making sweeping statements about the state of PCI in Northern Europe about. I fail to see how specifying 'Northern' makes any impact on its statistical insignificance.
What concerns me is that you are promoting the right message, but in totally the wrong way. Anyone with half a brain will see through the bad reporting, but maybe not the good intentions. PCI IS important, security IS important, but this is misrepresentation.
As a result, your 'answers' to my 'questions' are very welcome, but fairly meaningless.
No argument, 65 is a relatively small number - never hid that fact. But, I would posit that the findings are probably true/indicative. How do you feel about helping extend the sample size?
I've just came across to your blog.
Helpful blog!
Cheers..
Commenting by HaloScan
