The personal and small business data held on mobile phones could be at risk of fraudsters across the country, it has been highlighted.

According to a recent survey by Credant Technologies, which interviewed 600 commuters at London railway stations, it was found that 99 per cent of them use their mobiles or PDAs for some form of business work.

It was also revealed that 26 per cent have been informed by their company to avoid using personal mobile devices for corporate needs, although 35 per cent still send and receive business emails.

Another 77 per cent use their mobiles to store company names and addresses.

IT security specialist at Credant Sean Towns said: "People are ignorant to how easy a professional thief could take over their life, both personal and professional, and effectively destroy it."

Credant recently claimed that the public sector is under-resourced when it comes to IT security following reports regarding the Lothian and Borders Police, which misplaced a USB stick containing vehicle registrations and other data.

In a recent survey of SMEs for Connect, the two most important benefits of outsourcing were guaranteed response times and allowing in-house IT staff to concentrate on more strategic issues.