Employees Say Employer's Security Approach Hurts Their Productivity

More than nine in 10 employees say their productivity is affected by security measures employers put in place, and some 92% feel negatively impacted when required to use additional security for remote work, according to a survey by Dell.

Some 87% said their corporation prioritizes corporate security over employee convenience. Recent studies show that companies see employees as the third threat for IT security, with more than half worrying about temporary worker or contractor mistakes with their data security.

Some 35 percent of employees would sell information on company patents, financial records and customer credit card details for the right price, according to a survey cited earlier by HOTforSecurity. One in four employees would sell company data, risking both their jobs and criminal convictions, for less than $8,000. About 3% would sell private information for as little as $155 while 18% would accept $1,550.

The temptation to sell valuable information is exacerbated by the ready access most employees have to it, with 61% of respondents stating they had access to private customer data. Some 51% had access to financial data, such as company accounts or shareholder information, and 49% had access to sensitive product information, such as planned launches and patents, the authors of the study found.

When looking at changes to security in their corporate environment over the past 18 months, more than half of respondents say security has had a greater day-to-day impact on their work. More than 60% of IT professionals indicated that lack of awareness (or just a lack of knowledgeable people) is the greatest barrier to delivering a context-aware security practice in their organization.

The survey of more than 300 business users and over 450 IT technology professionals was conducted across the US, UK and Germany.