Many of us walk round with a host of gadgets about our person - but could these be causing harm for the companies we work for? According to new research, more workers than ever are plugging portable devices into company networks - with the resulting risk of viruses and the threat of data theft.

The DeviceWall Security Attitudes Survey 2006 from Centennial Software revealed that 70 per cent of workers now plug a USB drive, MP3 player, PDA or other portable device into a computer connected to the company network on a daily basis and 88 per cent plug in a portable device at least weekly. And not many firms are paying attention to it. The most common device to be connected to the network was the USB drive - used by 38 per cent of respondents. Also popular were PDAs (21 per cent), digital cameras (15 per cent), mobile phones (14 per cent) and MP3 players (7 per cent).