Lost memory sticks holding sensitive data can be detrimental to a company's bottom line, PCWorld reports. That's according to a recent Ponemon Institute study, which surveyed more than 400 organizations and found they will lose $2.5 million because of missing memory sticks. On average, the companies lost 12,000 records stored on the sticks, costing about $214 per record. More than 70 percent of survey respondents said they are either certain or feel it was likely that data breaches were caused by missing memory sticks. A U.S. Department of Homeland Security experiment placed USB sticks in parking lots and found 60 percent of those who picked them up accessed the data.
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