More than 37% of IT professionals have shared their work device with friends or family, according to global remote work survey
As the world moved towards a remote (or flexible) working environment, IT and operations teams became the business stakeholders most directly responsible for facilitating this move. Ensuring that operational capacity was not interrupted and the organization’s IT ecosystem remained functional was crucial to making this transition as smooth as possible.
However, there is an indication that the IT professionals charged with helping the remote work revolution are creating their own security issue. According to the recent COVID-19 State of Remote Work Survey 2.0, OneLogin discovered that more than a third of IT professionals have shared their work devices with friends or family members since the beginning of the work-from-home decree. This figure rises to almost 40% when considering US respondents in particular and drops slightly to 29% when reviewing UK responses. The survey also found that:
- 36% of IT professionals have downloaded personal applications to a work device since moving to a remote environment
- 28% have worked on a public and potentially unsecured WiFi since the move to remote work
- 22% have neglected to update a work device, potentially leaving it open to vulnerabilities
- 22% have shared their work password outside of their organization, demonstrating the sort of poor password hygiene that has led to account compromise in the past
- 16% have left their work device unattended, leaving it open to all manner of security compromise, not to mention theft.
“This lack of security awareness demonstrated by a sizable portion of the IT professionals surveyed is undoubtedly concerning,” said Brad Brooks, CEO of OneLogin. “It speaks to a wider cultural problem around conveying the importance of security across the entire company, as well as a well-documented need for more cross-departmental initiatives between IT and security teams. This would help to not only build stronger links between two departments with significant operational overlap, but would also help to foster a more security aware culture in IT departments.”
The survey results also indicate that key security technologies are not being deployed across IT departments:
- Only 62% of IT professionals have had anti-virus software deployed by their employer
- Only 36% have been using a VPN
- Only 41% have deployed multi-factor authentication
- Security best practices was only offered to 44% of respondents
- Phishing updates have only been deployed for 29% of IT professionals
About the survey
This survey was conducted with 2000 US and UK remote workers in December 2020. Conducted online, the survey was broken down by nationality, region, age, gender, job role, industry and seniority at a company.
