New research by Kroll Ontrack reveals that three in four (74%) workers who didn’t or couldn’t recover data from a PC, laptop, removable drive or mobile last year failed to ensure the information on the device was erased properly. That’s 800,000 employees who could inadvertently be gifting sensitive information to fraudsters or competitors.
Data that is thought to have been lost through software corruption or hardware damage is often recoverable, which is why devices no longer used must be permanently erased to prevent misuse of confidential or private data if they get into the wrong hands.
In fact, the study for Kroll Ontrack shows that three in five (62%) workers who lost data last year were able to recover it, which highlights how risky it is to assume that data on broken devices is irretrievable.
A third (34% or 1.1 million) of the 3.1 million workers who lost data from a device couldn’t recover the information, but only a quarter (26%) of these employees said they made sure the information on the ‘broken’ device was erased professionally.