UK businesses are failing to deal with high levels of sensitive data inadvertently leaking out of their organisations, according to research published this week.

The study of senior security and risk professionals in large organisations reveals that despite deep concerns about the security of portable devices such as USB sticks, iPods and BlackBerries, little is being done.

The top three sources of identified risk for information leaks were portable devices (75 per cent), email attachments (63 per cent) and email content (59 per cent).

Three-quarters of respondents said they are concerned about malicious breaches of information security, but equal concern was expressed over premeditated and inadvertent leaks.

Andrew Pearson, executive vice president of Europe at vendor Workshare, which conducted the survey, says most data is leaked inadvertently.

‘Because of the historical focus on spam and viruses, companies are in a malicious threat state of mind and are less attuned to inadvertent leaks, which are responsible for 95 per cent of all leaks,’ he said.

Just 43 per cent of respondents feel they have adequate policy enforcement in place for information security compliance, and 57 per cent of UK organisations do not have a method of automatic enforcement for document security compliance, according to the survey.

Some 73 per cent of organisations do not believe that converting a document to PDF makes it secure for distribution, but it remains the most common format for sharing documents online.

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