Most respondents didn't have a systematic data back-up policy in place for information held on the enterprise's laptops, according to a survey conducted by vendor Computer Associates.
Of those surveyed 88 percent had experienced theft, loss or damage to laptops, with 87 percent having remote workers who had sensitive or critical data on their machines.
Richard Collins, regional manager for New Zealand and BrightStor storage at Computer Associates, said that most organisations focussed on backing up mainframes or other mission-critical systems, and laptops simply weren't thought about.
"There just is no policy for backing up laptops in organisations," Collins argued, citing loss of productivity and competitive information, as well as downtime, as potential ramifications.
However, Collins does think this attitude will change over time. "CIOs and network administrators--they're acknowledging that there's a trend in the market to look at end-to-end storage," he said.
According to Collins CFOs were also getting involved in data backup issues within enterprises, because of the financial viability and asset protection issues.
Is this a news report or a puff piece designed to create interest in CA's mobile backup products which aren't even directory integrated, unlike products such as Novell's iFolder?