Acts of theft, fraud and vandalism in data centres are three times more likely to be inside jobs than perpetrated by external parties, according to data centre firm Migration Solutions.

Alex Rabbetts, managing director of Migration, said that around 65 per cent of data centre security incidents are driven by malicious intent rather than economic gain.

Of these, the top two categories of perpetrators are disgruntled current and former employees.

"Data is personal. We're talking about people's private information and quite often their money," said Rabbetts.

"Last year's data centre robberies in London were widely publicised. However, this kind of external breach is still relatively rare and the principal threat remains the enemy within."

Rabbetts added that physical security and logical security need to go hand in hand. Processes for managing staff access to the centre and to the data itself are as important to data centre integrity as reinforcing the doors and windows against a break in.

"Emerging security standards like ISO27001 [BS7799 or ISO17799] are helping to establish process and an audit trail in the data centre, but we need to push these harder if they are to become normal practice in our industry," he said.

"The truth is that for many organisations the price of not having the correct security processes in terms of corporate reputation and regulatory obligations, under SoX and FSA, will be far heavier than a burglary could ever be."