Workplace data theft common in U.K.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis - Brief article

Two recent surveys indicate that data theft by employees and managers in the United Kingdom is far too common.

First, a report from IT security firm Prefix revealed that not only do many U.K. employees admit to stealing corporate data such as confidential documents, customer databases, business contacts, and sales leads, most of them do not consider it wrong.

Prefix surveyed 1,000 employees and also found that

* 37 percent of men believe it is acceptable to take database information and sales leads.

* 49 percent of 16- to 24-year-olds do not think that workplace theft is "stealing"

* 73 percent of graduate trainees admit to office theft.

What makes these statistics even more startling for companies is that, according to the report, 78 percent of the workforce own devices such as USB flash drives or media players with which they could easily download and store data.

Even...