Now, we're usually not very keen at IT Week on those seemingly self-serving surveys, reports, pieces of research etc that vendors tend to push out, which seem to say exactly what the vendor wants. But sometimes there is actually something of worth in this lot. Data security specialist Workshare this week released a new report – the Workshare Global Security Threat Report - which could be a useful resource for security chiefs, if there's any out there that still don't appreciate the risks to their company's sensitive information that exist today.

The report, as you can see if you've made busy wiv dem fingers and clickety-clicked on the hyperlink, gathers together various examples of security breach incidents in the last four months impacting in several key ares: privacy, intellectual property, the mobile workforce, and corporate compliance. There's also stuff in there about the legislative background to information leakage; for example Lord Broers speech at Infosec that we reported, which hinted at the introduction of data breach notification laws. And the report covers key developments to keep you eyes on in the coming months.

So if you can get over the vested interest thing there's plenty of food-for-thought here; and for those that might argue it's an overly pessimistic and alarmist view of the threat environment…um, better off being overly cautious in this situation than being forced to shell out sack-fulls of money to investigate the unfortunate loss of 45 million credit card numbers.