McAfee reveals Europeans risk data

By Kirsten Doyle for Trellix
Johannesburg, 04 Apr 2007

Gold sponsor of the ITWeb Security Summit, McAfee, has announced findings from new research which reveals that European businesses are increasingly at risk from the inside as employees repeatedly expose valuable and sensitive company information.

It says Investments in solutions to protect corporate data from external threats and hacking are being undermined by the failure to fully communicate company security policies and by lax employee behaviour.

<B>ITWeb Security Summit 2007</B>

Taking place from 22 - 25 May 2007 at Vodaworld, ITWeb's Security Summit will bring together international and local IT and security professionals, practitioners, industry experts and analysts. Delegates will gain an understanding of the key tools, techniques and strategies needed to safeguard their organisations' most valuable asset - information. International security guru, Bruce Schneier, and creator of the PGP e-mail encryption protocol, Phil Zimmermann, will deliver the opening keynote addresses. Click here for booking information.

The study, conducted by ICM Research and commissioned by McAfee, saw some 600 office workers across Europe taking part. It highlights the organisational dangers of data loss as the research reveals that employees are transferring an increasing amount of confidential data out of the business, using methods which often fall outside of the control of the IT department.

It suggests that more than a third of European businesses (37 percent) have no set policy for handling sensitive documents and, in cases where policies do already exist, almost a quarter (24 percent) of employees don't know what they are.

Other key findings include, 32 million sensitive documents are being taken out of UK offices each week on portable devices and Web-based mail services and even IM are being used to transfer sensitive information outside of the business.

It also revealed that day-to-day internal documents and customer data/records are the two most common types of document to be taken out of a business electronically or physically. The study added that 52 percent of European employees would take company data with them when they leave.