UK companies’ data security at risk due to lack of employee compliance

Following recent controversy over data security in the public sector, a new survey has revealed that commercial organisations face the same potential dangers because many of their employees do not follow corporate policies on data and computer security.

The survey by technology market research specialist Vanson Bourne found that nearly half of those polled (48 percent) said data was threatened by employee negligence. Of those suffering security breaches, 43 percent estimated costs to the business to be between £10,000 and £100,000, while 14 percent said it had cost them over half a million pounds.

The security of data on laptop computers is most at risk, especially for the 58 percent of companies that reported laptop thefts in the past 12 months. Surprisingly 80 percent of businesses still only use traditional asset management tools to protect their machines, which are generally ineffective at protecting data once the asset itself is lost or stolen.

•Date: 15th January 2008• Region: UK •Type: Article •Topic: BC statistics
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