Poor Security Habits Might Force Companies to Bring Employees Back to the Office

• 69% admit to using corporate devices for personal use
• 57% say they allow other members of their household to use their corporate devices for schoolwork, gaming and shopping
• 82% admit to reusing passwords

While the vast majority of employees want to continue remote work post-pandemic, many of them ignore corporate security policies, researchers have found.

Could poor security habits force employees back to the office when COVID-19 has had its last dying breath? CyberArk researchers think it’s possible, at least for some organizations.

95% of employees want to keep working remotely even when it’s safe to return to offices, but 67% have been found to ignore corporate security policies. The findings suggest poor security practices could force businesses to reconsider the long-term viability of remote work.

As the pandemic forced in-person lives into virtual environments, remote workers have had to overcome several challenges to balance their work and personal lives. 78% admit to technology issues with connecting to corporate systems and resources. 45% cite disruption from family and pets as the biggest challenge of remote work, followed by balancing work and personal life (43%) and ‘Zoom fatigue’ (34%).

Many also recognize the benefits, like saving time on commuting (32%), being able run errands (24%) and catching up on household chores between meetings (23%). But many also admit they’ve found workarounds to corporate security policies to increase productivity, including sending work documents to personal email addresses, sharing passwords and installing rogue applications. These are the 67% mentioned earlier, whose poor security habits go far beyond sidestepping a policy or two.

In fact, according to the research, more education is not changing these behaviors, suggesting employees are deliberately ignoring security policies.

54% of the employees surveyed say they received security training specific to remote work. Of those, 69% admit to using corporate devices for personal use.

57% of all remote workers also admit that they allow other members of their household to use their corporate devices for activities like schoolwork, gaming and shopping. And 82% of all remote workers admit to reusing passwords.

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