Security News > 2020 > June > Employees new to working remotely are a security risk
An IBM survey of professionals new to working remotely finds those employees pose serious security risks-and it may not be their fault.
The report surveyed more than 2,000 people new to working at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and found that while 80% are confident in their organization's ability to handle cyberthreats that arise due to remote work, 45% also said that they haven't received any additional security training since going remote.
"The rapid shift to working from home has also changed the ways many organizations do business from moving face-to-face meetings to video conferencing calls to adding new collaboration tools-yet the survey showed many employees are lacking guidance, direction and policies," IBM said in a statement.
TechRepublic's Karen Roby previously spoke to security expert Richard Bird about the biggest concerns involved with working from home, of which Bird listed three: Businesses are having difficulties adapting to the decentralized security needs of a remote workforce, people at home may not behave as safely, and bad actors thrive in uncertainty.
A rise in breaches coupled with an unprepared workforce is bad news, and IBM again found that companies may not be preparing their workers: 42% of respondents said they work with personally identifying information in the course of their day, and 58% said they were unaware of any new security policies around managing such data.