Everybody suffers data leakage, study finds

Every single organisation in a year-long survey has suffered some sort of data leakage - with much of the trouble coming from trusted users, including the IT department itself.

Orthus Limited monitored 100,000 hours of activity over the past year, looking at user access, processes, and the storage and transmission of sensitive information - a timely study, given the massive data breach admitted by the government last week.

The results weren't encouraging. Every organisation examined in the audit had more than one case of data leakage - and trusted users are often the ones causing the trouble.

Richard Hollis, managing director of Orthus, said: "Until organisations accept that the majority of losses are associated with authorised users and implement the necessary controls where they are effective - between the user and the information itself - these losses will continue."

The highest incidence of data leakage was found in IT and customer service departments. The majority, some 68 per cent, of data leaks happened on mobile systems, as opposed to desktop computers. Other causes of leaks included web mail, removable media and corporate email.

Web-based applications were the method most frequently used to remove data from corporate systems, including web-based email, instant messaging and social networking sites.

Hollis advised companies to not just protect devices from security challenges, but to ensure they protect the data they hold.