Almost three quarters of the public are worried about government workers losing their personal date, research has revealed.

The study, conducted by IT security firm Sophos, found that 71 per cent of people surveyed thought that local authorities should prevent staff from accessing confidential data about people via devices such as laptops, blackberries and other devices when they were working remotely.

Carole Theriault, senior security consultant at Sophos, said: "If organisations need to give employees access to work files, a tight security strategy must become a crucial part of the public sector's IT infrastructure."

The same survey revealed that 78 per cent of respondents were concerned that visitors to local authority buildings might be able to access private data via wireless networks.

Sophos' research follows several recent high-profile incidents involving government agencies losing personal data.

Perhaps the most widely reported of these was the disappearance of two discs containing the details of 25 million people by HM Revenue and Customs.

A recent survey for Connect found that one in ten companies has lost important data as a result of a backup failure. The company has now developed a unique online backup service - http://www.totalrecall.co.uk – for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.