Firms see iPods as security risk! The iPod ,once thought to be a threat just to your own hearing. Is now a very serious threat to firms and companies and businesses of all sizes. The iPod and all the various MP3 Players that can be very easily hooked up to the back of the computer are now banned in about 30% of the workplace in small and large businesses across Canada.

The personal laptops and the tiny USB memory keys that can carry huge amounts of data are also banned actually forbidden by half of all buinesses according to a survey done in Canada. By Sun Micro systems of Canada INC.

You or somebody else out there could easily have millions of customers names and addresses on some of these small devices that can be carried around in your pocket. There are lots of people out there that have done a good job of locking and barring the front door to , but they don`t understand there is still a huge back door they are not aware of or they just have't figured it out yet.

There is a gaping back door to an increasing mobile workforce with employess carrying around potential data goldmines in their pockets or brief cases on everthing from wafer thin memory cards to Blackberry's personal digital assistants, cellphones, and notebook computers (laptops).

The data can very easily go astray when a device is lost or stolen, or it can be deliberately be put in the wrong hands by a or some disillusioned employee or employees. who have access to the confidental corporate files.

Companies that find out that customer information has gone missing face a credibilty crisis and it can severly damage their name. Some 28 percent of customers would be prepared to immediately terminate their relationship with a company if their private information was discovered to get into the wrong hands. Or the company compromised it in any way.

Where we see this most is from consumers is things like the basic name , credit card number,the expiry date, and their home address. I the hands of identiy thieves, they can and will wreck havoc.

On iPods and MP3 Players MP3 Players, you can put numberous photographs, videos, data with vast amounts of information.

Here's a great example an eight-gigabyte compact flash memory , the size of an after-dinner mint wafer, can hold approximately a half-million pages of text or 800,000 emails. iPods can hold up to 60 gigabytes.

Although companies are taking the right measures to protect the risk of loss data, only about 32 percent of executives surveyed believe that the optimum level to prevent and manage potential attacks is being done.