The COVID-19 pandemic has created a significant challenge for businesses worldwide, as it appears that their dispersed workforce does not place much importance on security – a large proportion of employees do not even know what phishing is.
The COVID-19 pandemic has clearly changed the way people work and accelerated the already growing trend of remote working. This has also created new security challenges for IT departments as employees use their own personal devices to access corporate data and services.
The “Everywhere Enterprise” – in which employees, IT infrastructure, and customers are everywhere – has led employees to not prioritize security.
Security platform Mobile Mountain examined the impact the lockdown has had on employees' work habits. It conducted a survey of 1,200 employees in the US, UK, France ,Germany ,Belgium, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.
The COVID-19 may have signaled the end of office work as we know it, as businesses shift to the new way of working.
The study found that over four in five (82%) of global respondents agree that they never want to return to the office full- time. This is despite one in three (30%) employees claiming that isolation from their team was the biggest barrier to productivity during lockdown.
The current distributed remote work environment has also given rise to a new threat landscape, with hackers increasingly targeting mobile devices with phishing attacks.
These attacks range from basic to sophisticated and are likely to succeed, with many employees unaware of how to recognize and avoid a phishing attack . More than two in five (43%) employees aren’t even sure what a phishing attack is.
Two in three (66%) agree that employers have the right solutions and technologies to allow them to work from home and 72% of employees agree that their mobile device was important in ensuring their productivity during the lockdown.
Every company needs to implement a mobile strategy that prioritizes user experience and enables employees to maintain maximum productivity on any device, anywhere, without compromising their personal privacy .
Mobile devices now play a more critical role than ever in productivity, so the security of mobile devices, applications , and users should be a top priority for every CIO.
Information source: howtogeek.com
