An online survey discovered that all 229 respondents who took part in the poll have at least 1 USB flash drive and almost a half of them (54% in particular) from 3 to 6. About 21% of respondents have over 10 devices with USB flash drive.

These items belong to the category of must-haves and this is good news for sellers but not that good for IT security employees who faced serious problems trying to guard sensitive data that can be easily disclosed thanks to these omnipresent devices.

Removable USB drives are allowed for use in 85% of companies in accordance with the poll figures. But the fact is that these devices are still used in the rest 15% of companies without permission as it is hard to control this fact. USB are not encrypted and the sensitive data of the company remains on them without any protection subjecting the company to the risk and making the company vulnerable this way.

In case the USB drive stolen or borrowed, the information becomes open and exposed to people not related to the company.

52% of polled respondents couldn’t even memorize what was saved at the device and 20% did not remove the corporate data saved on device. They do not need it any longer but do not delete it.

But what is really alarming is the fact that about 34% can’t remember the location of USB hard drive at some particular moment.

It is not surprising that about 10% of respondents confessed that they lost the USB device with sensitive data of the company stored on it and 76% of them did not inform the directors of the company about the loss. It would protect the company in this or that way and measures would be taken, but for some reason the members of the staff prefer to keep silence probably fearing fines or negative attitude, knowing that such accidents can spoil the career. Besides, storage of sensitive data on a flash drive can be a breach of corporate law in itself.

Sometimes corporation spend millions on IT security and all these expenses can be in vain because of staff.

The study concerning USB flash drives is a tip of the iceberg because 37% synchronize iPhones, iPods, smartphones with their devices with USB port.