More information is now created online about people, rather than by those individuals themselves, according to a study from storage specialist EMC.

The supplier calls the volume of online data referring to a specific person their “digital shadow". This footprint will often consist of details uploaded by a user themselves, but the presence of financial records, captured security images and web surfing histories are becoming increasingly significant.

And while 70 per cent of the digital world is created by individuals, the responsibility for protecting and maintaining 85 per cent of this information lies with businesses.

"Organisations need to plan for the limitless opportunities to use information in new ways and for the challenges of information governance,” said Joe Tucci, chief executive of EMC.

“As people’s digital footprints continue growing, so too will the responsibility of organisations for the privacy, protection, availability and reliability of that information,' he said.

"The burden is on IT departments within organisations to address the risks and compliance rules around information misuse, data leakage and safeguarding against security breaches.”

EMC's The Diverse and Exploding Digital Universe report, conducted with analyst IDC, also says the the digital universe in 2007 was 10 per cent bigger than estimated in the previous year’s report, with 281 billion gigabytes of digital information in exsitence.

Global data volume is growing by almost 60 per cent per year and is projected to be nearly 1.8 zettabytes (1,800 billion gigabytes) in 2011, a 10-fold increase over five years.