Work-related files go walkabout

More than half (55 per cent) of employees store work-related files in locations other than on a shared computer network.

A survey has found 49 per cent of PC users store corporate files in multiple locations, with 21 per cent using a memory stick, therefore compounding the risk further.

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That's just for starters. Fourteen per cent of employees admit to storing company material on their laptop's hard drives, nine per cent on personal devices not owned by their workplace, eight per cent use portable hard drives and seven per cent use mobile devices to keep hold of emails, files and documents, according to research by Dynamic Markets on behalf of enterprise content management company Tower Software.

And one per cent of respondents employed by the 300 companies in the UK taking part in the survey were unsure which of these locations they had stored work-related files on.

The research makes alarming reading, when an estimated 8,500 mobile devices are lost by UK business travellers in the country's airports every year.