14% of employees questioned admit to storing corporate material on the hard-drive of their laptop, and 9% even store work-related material on non-work owned personal devices. 8% use portable hard drives for work file storage, and 7% use mobile devices such as PDAs and smart phones for keeping hold of emails, files and documents.
Paul Brenchley, Vice President for Tower Software in EMEA explains, “Worryingly, 1% are unsure which of these locations they’ve stored work-related files in! Overall, employees at middle manager level seem to be worse at storing computer files in such places (62%), compared to administration staff (43%). Despite the meteoric rise in mobile working and popularity of mobile devices, I’m surprised that these figures are so high. It seems that warnings about corporate security, compliance and information control simply aren’t registering with many employees. The use of memory sticks for example, will leave many organisations in breach of their security contracts that forbid them in corporate buildings - or any other location with a corporate IP address.”
“Fines and security threats such as those related to data protection and sensitive business and personal information continue to make regular news headlines. However, what also concerns me is the effect that poor information management practice can have day-to-day. Some consequences go beyond failing regulatory compliance, frustrating co-workers, losing customers and bad publicity. In some organisations, getting the right information to the right people at the right time is absolutely critical.”