On July 2, 2020, Trend Micro published the results of a study on cybersecurity and IT that they conducted based on interviews with 13,200 remote workers in 27 countries. The purpose of the study, called “Head in the Clouds”, was to reveal the attitudes of employees concerning corporate cybersecurity and company IT policies.

Some data from the study.

The study revealed that:

• 56% of respondents admit to using a non-work-related application on a company device, and 66% have uploaded company data to that application.
• 80% of respondents admit to using their laptop to browse personal topics, and only 36% completely restrict the sites they visit.
• 39% of respondents admit to accessing company data often or always from a personal device, which almost certainly violates company security policy.
• 8% of respondents admit that they view or access pornographic content on their work laptop, and 7% access the dark web.

It’s not all bad news however, almost three-quarters (72%) of telecommuters say they are more aware of their organizations’ cybersecurity policies, but many break the rules anyway due to limited understanding of resource constraints. While, 85% of respondents say they take their IT team’s instructions seriously, and 81% agree that cybersecurity within their organization is partly their responsibility. This data indicates that it is a good time to promote greater employee awareness of cybersecurity.

The study also indicates that, for employees, productivity is more important than protection. A third of respondents (34%) admit that they do not reflect on whether the applications they use are approved by IT or not, because they just want to do their job. In addition, 29% believe that they will get away with using a non-work-related application, because the solutions provided by the company are “nonsense”.

How to improve Cybersecurity and information protection

This study shows how much remains to be done for the effective implementation of cybersecurity and information protection measures in organizations, and that the time to promote greater awareness is now.

It is time to provide our teams with versatile solutions that allow them to safely access via VPN, work with other applications through integrations in a secure way, access information from a single channel, in short, employees need to be able to work remotely or from the office, without this reducing their capabilities, or the organization’s regulatory compliance.

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