Organisations with poor collaboration between security, marketing and privacy managers are twice as likely to have suffered a data breach in the past two years than those with good internal communications, according to research.

The survey, carried out by the Ponemon Institute for Microsoft, found that 74 per cent of companies that admitted to poor collaboration said they had experienced one or more significant data breaches in the past two years.

But only 29 per cent of companies who claimed to have good collaboration reported one or more breaches in the same period.

Companies need to work on communication, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"Security and privacy people often don't even speak the same language and often report to different part of the company," he said.

Security officers often come from an IT background, and privacy officers from a legal background, compounding the communication problem.

Security and privacy officers also fail to communicate properly with the marketing side of a business, the research found.

While 78 per cent of security and privacy executives said they were confident that their marketing colleagues consult them before collecting or using personal information, only 30 per cent of marketers said they actually do so.