Dell has released the results of its End-User Security Survey, which highlights the widespread unsafe sharing of confidential and classified data at work.

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The results indicate that employees are finding it difficult to be both efficient and productive in their job and to maintain company data security. Companies must now focus on informing employees and enforcing procedures and policies that protect data everywhere, without affecting productivity.

Sharing

According to statistics, three out of four employees would share confidential, regulated or sensitive company data in certain situations, such as:

– When directed by management (43 per cent).
– To aid efficiency at work (22 per cent).
– To help the recipient with efficiency at work (13 per cent).

The rates are alarmingly high and suggest that employees must be trained in best practices in data security.

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Unsafe behaviours

The survey also found that employees access, share and store date insecurely. 24 per cent of those surveyed do so to complete their job, with 18 per cent saying they were unaware that this is unsafe. Three per cent indicated that they had bad intentions when doing so.

This behaviour includes connecting to unsecured public Wi-Fi while handling confidential information (46 per cent), accessing personal email at work (49 per cent), and misplacing a company-owned device (17 per cent). According to statistics, just one-third of lost laptops have data encryption

Protecting Information

63 per cent of those surveyed partake in cybersecurity training to protect sensitive data; however, 18 per cent of these continued to conduct unsafe behaviour due to not realising it was wrong. 21 per cent find it hard to keep abreast of changing security policies and guidelines, while 22 per cent are worried that they will cause damage by mistake.

Every company is different; however, this survey emphasises that companies need to better understand the daily scenarios and tasks in which employees share data unsafely.

Creating clear and simple policies that cover common scenarios and deploying endpoint security solutions, such as those provided by https://www.promisec.com/, will create a balance between data protection and employee productivity.

Organisations need to inspire employees to play a critical role in keeping the workplace secure and safe. When cybersecurity education does not equal confident or empowered handling of sensitive data, the approach must be changed.