News

News Archive- 22 April 2008

Unsecured sensitive data discovered on 36% of Enterprise computers.

Rise in the levels of pornography found on workplace PCs.

22 April 2008: Specialist risk-mitigation software vendor PixAlert has seen a rise in the levels of risk it discovers when scanning computer networks in the enterprise & public sector for unsecured sensitive data and inappropriate images.

“We had expected to find an improved compliance culture, given the reputational & financial damage organisations face from any incident of data leakage or pornography in the workplace” said PixAlert CEO Colm Doherty, “but the human factor remains as an issue”

The company’s software was used to scan PCs, fileshares and e-mail accounts in more than 150 organisations. Despite a rise in regulatory compliance imperatives and investments made in network gateway controls, PixAlert discovered disturbing levels of personal & sensitive data, leaving organisations open to potential ID fraud and intellectual property theft.

“PixAlert found suspected sensitive data on 46% of PCs, in 32% of e-mail accounts and 30% of server shares” says Andy Churley, Chief Marketing Officer, adding “We were concerned at the volume and nature of the material we found, including full credit card details, National Insurance & pension details and network logins & passwords. In most of the organisations scanned, we found more than enough material to perpetrate ID fraud and the constitute a significant loss of critical data such as financial information and intellectual property”

During the past year, PixAlert also saw a rise in the volumes of Inappropriate Images both stored & circulated within the enterprise and beyond it to external parties. Pornographic or inappropriate material was found on 28.5% of PCs in 2007, up from 25% in 2006 and in 14.4% of e-mail accounts, up from 12.4% in 2006.

“What’s interesting is that this issue persists, regardless of the significant investments made in content filtering and gateway controls in recent years”, says Churley, adding “it just reinforces the need to know what is actually on your network, by conducting regular risk audits”