Big organisations are employing more stringent policies in the selection of candidates in order to make sure they will not play a part in future data loss, it has been revealed.

Alexandra Kelly of pre-employment screening company Powerchex noted that organisations were adopting such measures as many high profile cases of unsecure client data had caused several companies to embrace screening as a necessary part of recruitment.

Ms Kelly added that this was "in conjunction with a lot of internal controls companies will put in place or have put in place to make sure that anybody who could potentially endanger data is, to some degree, screened".

Screening is already considered as best practice by the legal sector and has been a largely mandated requirement in the financial services industry, according to Datanomic Ltd.

It added that telecommunications, transport and local government were more likely to embrace the technology in order to make sure employees were legitimate.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent)