A recent study by Forrester Consulting, commissioned by Tenable, has highlighted the risks introduced from employees when working remotely
The data is drawn from ‘Beyond Boundaries: The Future of Cybersecurity in the New World of Work,’ a commissioned study of more than 1,300 security leaders, business executives and remote employees, including 104 respondents in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
When asked how confident security leaders and business executives were that employees were taking adequate measures to protect the organisation’s data 47% said they were very or completely confident. However, remote employees showed a different picture.
When asked what was important to them, 85% of remote employees said protecting customer data was somewhat or very important. However, 54% of remote employees reported using a personal device to access this information. It’s a similar situation with protecting the organisation’s intellectual property as 68% of remote employees said it was important while 20% will use a personal device to access it. Only 47% of remote employees said that they consistently follow measures to protect their organisation’s data, intellectual property and systems when working from home.
Going further, only 11% of remote employees strictly follow their organisations’ mandates restricting access to data and systems via personal devices. Most worrying is that 34% of employees said they will ignore or circumvent their organisation’s cybersecurity policies, while 21% said one of the challenges they faced is that their organisation's security policies and practices weren’t clear.
David Cummins, vice-president of EMEA at Tenable, explained, “Employees want the flexibility to work from anywhere. The challenge is how they do that securely.”
