The research found some businesses fail to wipe private employee information, accounting details and sensitive IP data from drives before they are sold.

The report, a second-year joint project between the University of Glamorgan in Wales, Edith Cowan University and vendor BT, collected data from 300 drives obtained from IT auctions, computer fairs and online across Australia, the US, US and Germany.

University of Glamorgan research leader, Dr Andrew Blyth said the results show hard drives containing sensitive data are still being sold.

"Just from looking at this random sample, it is obvious that there are hard drives on public sale that still contain highly confidential material," Blyth said. "This research proves that companies and individuals still need to take this issue of the disposal of information stored on hard drives more seriously."

BT head of security technology research, Dr Andy Jones said organizations should control information exposure as legal and ethical responsibilities are well known.