After well over a year of getting used to working from home, as U.K. employees look to head back into the office, new data shows they don’t see themselves as a cyber risk (which makes them one!).
I’ve already made the case that remote employees have adopted bad cybersecurity habits while working from home. It, therefore, makes sense that employers need to be aware of this and take precautions to ensure employees realize that cybersecurity is more important than when the pandemic started.
Data from security vendor Armis points out this same issue exists throughout the world. In a survey of 2000 UK employees, it appears that British users are the same as their U.S. counterparts:
- 61% of U.K. employees use their personal mobile phone and 44% use their own laptop for business purposes
- 25% admit to having insufficient security in place on their personal devices
- 61% intend to return to the office with those same personal devices
- 60% don’t believe their personal devices represent a threat
All this spells danger for organizations, as we obviously have a material portion of users thinking they are simply going to bring their admittedly insecure devices back into the workplace and continue to use them.
It’s critical that organizations have a cybersecurity component to their “return to work” plan – one that addresses device security, acceptable use of company resources (including Internet access), and Security Awareness Training to elevate these remote employees’ sense of organizational vigilance against cyberthreats to an acceptable and effectual level.
