Survey: Employees ignore data security

A new study by the Ponemon Institute finds that many employees are engaging in sloppy behavior that could jeopardize a firm's data security. Nearly 70 percent of the 967 IT professionals surveyed violated the rules by copying confidential company data to USB sticks. Some of them even lost said USB sticks, but did not report it immediately.

A growing number of IT employees are logging onto social networks from their work computers--nearly one-third of those surveyed engaged in the practice. And more than half of those surveyed said they downloaded personal software on corporate PCs.

This survey is bad news for every company. So what are you supposed to do? Fire everybody who violates the rules? Hire a team of cyber cops to troll the workplace? Have mandatory training sessions every three months?

These are tough questions for any company. Make sure the employees you hire follow the rules and make sure the rules are clear. That's about all you can do, isn't it?

For more on security violations:
- check out this CIO.com article

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