Tuesday 22nd April 2008
Four-fifths of companies in the UK do not encrypt their hard drives, putting sensitive data at risk of theft, it has been revealed.
Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers shows that 80 per cent of firms have no encryption in place on their computer systems.
Meanwhile, two in three have no protection against information being taken off-site on a USB drive.
Financial details are among those which could be at risk, in light of the discovery that one in ten websites do not encrypt data during online transactions.
Offline, PricewaterhouseCoopers found that the media coverage given to the loss of laptops and discs by financial services providers may not represent the full extent of the issue.
Among small companies surveyed, many reported having experienced a data loss which was never reported outside of their own workforce.
"This implies that, for every such incident that is reported in the press, many others go unreported," the study notes.
"Given the number of data loss stories that have been in the news over the last year, this is of concern."
Within the financial services industry, mixed findings are reported by PricewaterhouseCoopers, with 90 per cent of hard drives said to be unencrypted.
Some three-quarters of such practitioners are seen to have policies in place which are conveyed to employees in the staff handbook to help ensure no data loss occurs.
Despite this, financial services providers are most likely to have had an employee misuse their email in a way which could put sensitive data at risk.
HSBC is among the most recent to have a lost disc reported in the press, having misplaced information on about 370,000 life assurance policyholders.
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