Employers won't like what workers have on PCs

Put Palisade Systems' "big brother" software on your company's network, and Kurt Shedenhelm swears it'll find something you won't like. Confidential information being sent out. Copyrighted music or videos coming in. Employees visiting inappropriate Web sites. Data being shared, either maliciously or by accident, that could draw steep fines for the company should regulators find out.

"Within an hour of our software being installed, we usually find a hundred violations," said Shedenhelm, president of Palisade Systems in Ames, Iowa, which provides monitoring and filtering solutions for businesses. "It's amazing what it can do. Most of our clients are shocked by what they learn."

The "data-loss prevention" market is in many ways the result of a shift to more defensive thinking in tech security. For years, much focus was placed on keeping threats out by building firewalls and using other tools to thwart hackers.

Now companies are looking within, and realizing insider threats can be just as harmful, Shedenhelm said. The data loss prevention market has grown from $10 million in 2004 to more than $150 million this year, according to analysts and trade publications.