The issues of data security and disaster recovery have been highlighted by a number of high profile cases of data loss via new technology, according to an expert.

Nicki Wallace, the global solutions marketing manager at RSA, explained that a lot of the organisation's customers have showed how social networking is causing a "huge problem" for them at the moment.

She explained that it is purely due to the volume of people that are using social networking sites for personal activity and inadvertently doing wrong by their company.

She continued: "Facebook is a perfect example, or [MSN] Messenger, of people using new technology tools and actually sharing corporate information that they're probably not even thinking about when they're doing it."

Ms Wallace explained that people should ensure that controls be placed on emails to stop any such things necessitating the use of disaster recovery, should a system be compromised by intruders.

RSA is a business security solutions provider and is a partner of over 90 per cent of Fortune 500 companies.

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 for SMEs to ensure they can survive any disaster.