The new emphasis on security by Long & Foster IT and financial officials has been supported by a "fantastic awareness" of the issue by executives outside of IT, which was brought about mostly by recent high-profile data breaches, Raichura added.

A year ago, Long & Foster itself was the victim of the theft of a laptop from inside one of its buildings. Although the data on the machine -- requirements for a new BI system, written in Microsoft Word -- does not appear to have been misused, the theft prompted the company to establish a policy requiring all employees to take their laptops home every day.

The policy, which Raichura acknowledges may seem counterintuitive, aims to promote a sense of responsibility among users, prompting them to "guard the laptop like it is personal property."

Few are vigilant

Bill Hostmann, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said that while many organizations go to great lengths to secure transactional systems and Web applications, many more "do almost nothing, or a very limited amount," to protect data housed in BI applications and spreadsheets.