Employee behaviour putting company data at risk

The lines between home and work are blurring, and employees' behaviour is putting Australian corporate data at risk and exposing company systems to attack, according to research from Gemalto.

Efforts to improve security in the enterprise often focus on implementing complex technical systems but ignore the human behaviours that are leaving companies open to breaches.

More than half (54%) of Australian respondents to a survey conducted by the digital security company use personal devices to access work emails.

Of these, only 53% had been required to implement any additional security measures, such as using a security device or changing passwords.

Half of Australian respondents had also downloaded an app onto an employer-owned device that was not verified by an official app store, 46% had installed an app on a work device without the knowledge of their IT team and only 24% report being unable to install apps without input from IT.

Only 25% of users had increased the complexity of their passwords in the wake of the wave of recent high-profile data breaches, such as the Ashley Madison and Sony Pictures data leaks. Some 30% said their online behaviour had not changed in response to these reports.

Image courtesy of Michael Coghlan under CC