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Nuclear secrets, sensitive documents and personal information are publicly, and freely, available.

According to reports, the latest instance of the country's information largesse involves sensitive security information about a thermoelectric power plant run by the Chubu Electric Power Company, including the plant's security arrangements, the names and addresses of its security personnel, and other confidential information.

But the open nature of Nippon seems largely down to file-sharing and viruses. It appears that an employee working in security is to blame, after installing the popular Share file-sharing application. Once infected by a virus, the machine started pumping out sensitive company information through the file-sharing network.

One such incident might seem unfortunate. But there has been a rash of them of late. In fact the same firm suffered a similar disaster just four months prior; this time via

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the Winny file-sharing application.

Then last month an antivirus company revealed that internal documents and customer information had been leaked after one of its employees failed to install antivirus software.

Is there a link here? Security staff not being secure. Antivirus staff not using antivirus. But the litany continues...

Earlier this year, UK security company Sophos reported that information about Japanese sex victims was leaked by a virus after a police investigator's computer had been infected.

And last summer Winny surfaced again in the news; this time leaking the country's classified nuclear secrets after a virus infected a contractor's laptop.

Japan's reaction? In March Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe pleaded with citizens: 'I want everyone to be cautious. The most secure way of preventing information leaks is not to use Winny software,' he said.

'There has been a series of viruses written specifically to leak information from infected PCs onto Japanese file-sharing networks, causing embarrassing headlines for the companies concerned. Questions will surely be asked whether sufficient steps were taken to curb the problem back in January,' said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos. 'Data breaches like this are serious, and catapult sensitive information that should be kept confidential into the public domain for anyone to download. All businesses need to take steps to ensure that employees' use of company data is secured and controlled.'