Most Employees Take Online Risks with Employers' Safety, Survey Shows

Some 93% of office workers engage in some form of risky online habits that could jeopardize their employer or customers, according to a survey by Intermedia.

Millennials are most likely to breach the personal and professional computing divide by installing apps without company approval, saving company files to personal cloud storage or engaging in other unsafe practices.

Study shows employees with access to company data who are tasked with keeping the company secure, such as IT personnel, are much more likely to engage in risky behavior than the average employee.

One in three IT professionals has given out their login and password credentials to other employees (compared to 19% across all respondents), while nearly 30 percent said they have accessed systems belonging to previous employers after they left the job (compared to only 13% among all respondents). A third said they would take data from their company if it would benefit them – nearly three times the rate of general business professionals.

These practices create risks including lost data, regulatory compliance failures, data breaches, eDiscovery complications, ex-employee access, and even out-and-out sabotage by a disgruntled current or former employee, authors of the study say.

Long-term employees (7+ years) tend to introduce greater overall security risks.

The survey exposes the online security habits of more than 2,000 office workers in the US and UK.

Recent studies show that 91 percent of employees feel measures that employers put in place harm productivity, and 92 percent of business respondents are negatively affected when required to use additional security for remote work.

To lower risks of data loss and breaches, check out the top three measures companies should keep in mind.