26/01/2012

A large number of companies put sensitive information at risk during operations to recover digital data, a new survey has revealed.

The 'Trends in Security of Data Recovery Operations' report conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of DriveSavers surveyed 769 IT security and IT support practitioners and found that 85 per cent of these respondents said that their company makes use of third-parties to recover data.

However, only 28 per cent of these organisations view data security as a main criterion for choosing a third-party recovery service.

Worryingly, 83 per cent said that intellectual property warrants the use of third-party data recovery services if they are damaged or lost – suggesting highly sensitive data being put at risk.

Only 24 per cent of the respondents agreed that their company had never lost confidential or sensitive data during data recovery.

In response, DriveSavers says: "Based on these findings, organisations should have in place a policy and guidelines for selecting a data recovery service provider."