Two-thirds of employees take their work home
Increasingly shifting boundaries between work and home life means small firm employees are unwittingly putting their employers at risk of cyber-attack, according to a new study.
A poll of 1,000 small business employees commissioned by telecoms firm TalkTalk found that 70% of small business employees admitted taking their work home on evenings and weekends, with 82% admitting they also used work time for personal matters.
TalkTalk said this blurring of work and home life posed a security risk to small firms, in light of the finding that less than half of respondents felt they could spot obvious online scams.
Of those that used work computers for personal reasons , checking the news, shopping and “life admin” – tasks like booking travel and online banking – were most commonly cited as activities done on a work computer.
Less than a third (32%) of small firm employees acknowledged the threat such actions could pose to cyber-security, with only a quarter believing streaming music or video posed a danger to the company.
Broken down by gender, men appeared less confident in their ability to spot online scams; 40% said they were easily able to spot threats online, compared to half of women.
Employees in IT and telecoms were found to be the least confident in recognising online scams, and TalkTalk said this could be explained by their inside knowledge of the complexity of modern digital threats.
Charles Bligh, managing director of TalkTalk Business, said: “For many people, work no longer ends at the office door, it continues on the train home or after picking up the kids from school.
“That flexibility has to work both ways. It isn’t surprising to see people catering to their own personal needs in office hours, but security solutions need to evolve to reflect that change of behaviour. Malicious content is getting more advanced and harder to spot – we only need to look at recent malware targeting the NHS or Yahoo! for proof of that.”
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