Number of employees who would steal data increases significantly

Almost three-quarters of employees would steal company secrets if they were fired and had clear plans to take something with them if they left.

A survey of more than 1,000 UK employees by Imperva found that 70 per cent of respondents had clear plans to take something with them upon actually leaving their job. The most popular data to take was intellectual property (27 per cent) or customer records (17 per cent).

More than half also claimed to have personal ownership of the data already, with 59 per cent having it in case they were about to change jobs and 53 per cent in case they were about to be dismissed. The vast majority (85 per cent) carry corporate data in their home computers or on mobile devices.