Only A Quarter Of Employees Have Cyber Security Training

COVID-19 has radically altered the corporate cyber-threat landscape. Thanks to this lockdown, we are all now working from home and for many of us it is very hard to strike the right work and personal life balance and focus. But millions of employees working remotely have gotten no information about how to keep their devices and home networks safe.

A new report from Kaspersky shows that employers are failing to prepare their workers for many of the cyber security risks present when working on business at home.

According to Kaspersky, 51% have been watching adult content on the devices they use for work as well. Nearly a fifth (18%) of workers do this on devices provided to them by their employers, with 33% admitting to watching adult content on their personal devices that they also use to do their work.  Also, 73% of workers have not received any IT security awareness training since they transitioned to working from home.

Globally, many more employees are now working from home and therefore it is very important for organisations to ensure their staff can do this securely. 

Establishing effective cyber security measures is critical as remote working may also bring new risks such as increased spam and phishing attacks, connecting to compromised WiFi spots or the use of shadow IT by employees. Millions of people across the world were forced to begin working from home in early March as countries put quarantine measures in place. Yet in the report, 73% of 6k employees who spoke with Kaspersky said they have " not yet received any specific cyber security awareness guidance or training from their employer." 

Worse, another 27% of workers said they have already been on the receiving end of COVID-19 related phishing emails.

The findings are part of a larger Kaspersky study on how the Corvid-19 virus has changed peoples working methods."It is difficult to keep things 'business as usual' when everything needs to change so dramatically," said Andrey Dankevich, senior product marketing manager at Kaspersky. "While employees are trying to get used to the new reality of working from home, IT and cybersecurity teams are under pressure to enable them to continue working safely." 

The cyber security dangers inherent in the massive shift to teleworking, which exposes business data to the insecurity of home networks and devices used by multiple children and other adults are well known, yet the Kaspersky report shows that many businesses are still failing to prepare their employees for the various threats that have only increased since cybercriminals have increased efforts to take advantage of people working from home. 

Kaspersky say that many employees have increased the use of online services for work that were not approved by their IT departments, such as video conferencing (70%), instant messengers (60%) or file storage services (53%). The report reveals  other worrying statistics, like the fact that 68% of respondents said they use their own computers and just 53% of employees use a VPN to connect to corporate networks.
 
The report also notes that at least a third of respondents admitted to visiting adult websites on the laptops they also used for work, exposing themselves to even more risk considering cybercriminals often use these sites as a way to steal information or trick people into downloading malicious content.

Kaspersky included a number of suggestions in the report that ranged from making sure all employees know who to call in the event of a cybersecurity problem to paying close attention to workers who have to use personal devices.

Enterprises should also make sure all devices and systems are up to date with patches in addition to scheduling regular cybersecurity training sessions. Employees should ensure that personal cyber security is given to each employee that they can do on their lap-tops for about 10/15 mins every day.

 Kaspersky:      Kaspersky:        Hindustan Times:     Techrepublic:   

_____________________________________________________

Please contact GoCyber for a cost-effective and very engaging training tool for all employees.  To  request a demo click  >  Here  <

For a Cyber Audit Report and recommendations on your organisation’s cyber security and cyber training please contact Cyber Security Intelligence