Security News > 2023 > September > Shadow IT: Security policies may be a problem

When asked why they use personal devices to do company work, the 334 IT, security and business professionals polled offered a variety of reasons, including three that show that many employees using them to get around their organization's security policies.

Employees shouldn't be blamed for flawed security policies.

Workers use their personal devices for work to access websites and applications that have been restricted by the IT department, and because getting through security measures is frustrating.

This, and the fact that only 47% of the pollees said that they always follow all the cybersecurity policies, shows that the security policies in place are not working for all.

"Unfortunately, we don't have data on which specific policies respondents felt justified in going around, but we can make two inferences from this response: Any security policy that workers can ignore at will does not have adequate safeguards around it, and if workers who generally try to follow the rules ignore a security policy, either they don't understand the risks associated with a specific behavior, or the policy itself is flawed," the researchers said.

Security and IT professionals must make an effort to understand why workers feel they have to go around policies.

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2023/09/20/shadow-it-security-policies/