Employees putting company data at risk

Employees are leaving their organisations vulnerable to data loss by failing to comply with data storage policies, according to data recovery vendor Kroll Ontrack.

Research conducted by the vendor revealed only 40 per cent of respondents knew of a policy that their company has in place to indicate where data should be stored.

However, the survey also found 61 per cent of those questioned "usually" save to a local drive instead of a company network.

Phil Bridge, managing director at Kroll Ontrack UK, said the survey reveals that data storage polices do not necessarily safeguard a vast amount of critical company data.

He added: “This fact, coupled with the large number of information-oriented regulations that have been enacted, reinforces that companies need to be prepared to respond to data loss at the employee level.

“Saving to a local hard drive on a desktop or laptop more often than not contradicts data storage policies, which usually require employees to save to a network folder.”

Kroll Ontrack is advising organisations about the risks that are associated with saving to a local drive. The vendor has recommended that with an external backup drive or backup software this risk can be minimised.

The survey also found that 44 per cent of respondents said their preferred storage location was not backed up.

Bridge suggested implementing a guideline to save documents to a network, ensuring the employee’s data is regularly backed up in accordance with company retention procedures.

“With the majority of employees saving to unprotected, local drives, companies could be at risk of losing anything from project plans and spreadsheets to customer data and financial information,” concluded Bridge.