More young workers resist curbs on workplace IT gadget use

Up to 57 per cent of 21-to-|32-year-old employees would contravene such policies restricting use of their own devices, cloud storage and wearable technologies for work, it found.

Based on findings from an independent 20-country survey last month of 3,200 employees (908 of them in Asia) in that age group, the research showed a 21-per-cent increase in the willingness to break usage rules compared with a similar Fortinet survey conducted last year.

The new research also describes the extent to which members of this age group have been victims of cybercrime on their own devices, their “threat literacy” and their widespread practice of storing corporate assets on personal cloud accounts.

Despite respondents’ positive attitude about their employers’ provisions for BYOD (bring your own device) policy, with 48 per cent agreeing this “empowers” them, 46 per cent stated they would contravene any policy banning the use of personal devices at work or for work purposes.

This propensity to ignore measures designed to protect employer and employee alike carries through into other areas of personal information-technology usage. Forty-three per cent of Asian respondents using their own personal cloud storage (eg DropBox) accounts for work purposes said they would break any rules brought in to stop them.

On the subject of emerging technologies such as Google Glass and smart watches, more than half (55 per cent) would contravene any policy brought in to curb the use of these at work.

When asked how long it would take for wearable technologies such as smart watches and Google Glass to become widespread at work or for work purposes, 20 per cent said “immediately” and a further 39 per cent said when costs came down. Only 3 per cent of the Asian respondents disagreed that the technologies would become widespread.

Ninety per cent of the sample has a personal account for at least one cloud storage service, with DropBox accounting for 32 per cent of the total sample. Of personal account holders, 72 per cent have used them for work purposes. Fifteen per cent of this group admits to storing work passwords using these accounts, 19 per cent |financial information, 25 per cent critical private documents such as contracts or business plans, and more than a third (39 per cent) store customer data.

Almost one third (32 per cent) of the Asian cloud storage users sampled stated they fully trusted the cloud for storing their personal data, with only 6 per cent citing aversion through lack of trust.

When asked about devices ever being compromised and the resulting impact, more than 56 per cent of responses indicated an attack on personally owned computers, with about half of these affecting productivity and/or loss of personal and/or corporate data. Attacks were far less frequent on smartphones (27 per cent), despite the sample reporting a higher level of ownership of smartphones than for laptops and personal computers. The same percentage was observed for tablets (27 per cent), which were less commonly owned than laptops and PCs.

Among the potentially worrying findings of the research, 12 per cent of respondents said they would not tell their employer if a personal device they used for work purposes became compromised.

The research exercise examined |“literacy levels” for different types of security threat. Questioned on specific threats like APTs (advanced persistent threats), DDoS (distributed denial of service), botnets and pharming, |more than half (61 per cent) appear completely uneducated on these. |This represents an opportunity for |IT departments to provide further |education around the threat land-scape and its impact, according to Fortinet.

The survey also hinted at a direct correlation between BYOD usage and threat literacy, that is, the more frequent the BYOD habit, the better a respondent’s understanding of threats. This represents a positive finding for organisations when considering if or when to bring policies in alongside training on the risks.

Patrice Perche, Fortinet’s senior vice president for international sales and support, said the study highlighted the greater challenge IT managers faced when it came to knowing where corporate data resides and how it is being accessed. There is now more than ever a requirement for security intelligence to be implemented at the network level to enable control of user activity based on devices, applications being used and locations.

“On the positive side, however, 88 per cent of the Asian respondents accept that they have an obligation to understand the security risks posed by using their own devices. Educating employees on the threat landscape and its possible impact is another key aspect for ensuring an organisation’s IT security,” he said.