According to the end-of-year survey of 224 IT and security administrators worldwide, over 40% of businesses in the last year have more remote users connecting to the corporate network from home or when travelling, compared to 2008. And most revealing of all, Check Point says it discovered the clear majority (77%) of businesses have up to a quarter of their total workforce consisting of regular remote users.

Despite this, the IT security vendor says that just 27% of respondents said their companies currently use hard disk encryption to protect sensitive data on corporate end points.

In addition, only 9% of businesses surveyed use encryption for removable storage devices – such as USB flash drives – in spite of the fact that a more mobile workforce carrying large amounts of data on portable devices leaves confidential corporate data vulnerable to loss, theft and interception.

Commenting on the survey results, Juliette Sultan, Check Point's head of marketing, said: "With less than 30% of businesses saying they use data encryption, the majority of corporations are left dangerously exposed to the risk of a serious data breach."

"Fortunately, the survey data also shows enterprises recognise the need to address the issue, particularly with a growing mobile workforce," she noted.

The survey also revealed approximately 47% of respondents plan to purchase an end point security solution in the next year, with disk encryption (24%), NAC (22%) and media encryption (13%) being the most popular end point applications.

In addition, desktop antivirus (90%), antispyware (56%), personal firewalls (49%) and VPN clients (49%) remain the leading end point applications already deployed within the organisations surveyed.

Interestingly, Check Point says that, in those firms with less than 5,000 employees, it found they currently use end point products from an average of three different vendors in their organisations, causing a number of security management issues.

The study also found that larger enterprises use – on average – end point products from five different vendors and also feel the complexity is difficult to effectively manage.