Fifty-nine percent of ex-employees admitted to stealing confidential customer information, such as contact lists, from their companies once they lost or left their jobs, a recent study found.

The study, co-authored by researchers at Symantec and the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and information management research firm, revealed that the most common records lifted were email lists, employee records, customer information and non-financial data.

The study also revealed that many of the data theft incidents could have been avoided had companies implemented better data loss prevention policies and technologies, with a large majority (82 percent) of employees maintaining that their former company did not perform a document audit or review before they left their job.

The full story is available from CRN Australia.