Dive Brief:
- As companies strive to stay operational while fully distributed, 41% of employees say they share corporate information using their personal apps at least once a week, according to a survey of 1,002 full-time workers conducted in April by software company Wrike.
- Almost half of employees do not use corporate VPNs to access company data. Among those employees who log in through their home networks, nearly one-third (31%) admit they're not sure how their internet connection is encrypted.
- Stay-at-home orders led 47% of companies to adopt new software applications for collaboration and communication, according to the survey.
Dive Insight:
Whether it's a component of the work week for part of the team or a permanent reality for the entire company, remote work is here to stay as the pandemic unfolds.
In the interim, it's up to IT organizations to lead employees as they deal with the increased risks of distributed work. While 84% of respondents say they understand common cybersecurity risks, the survey results from Wrike reveal there's room for improvement when it comes to their behavior.
When asked why they turned to personal apps to manage their workflow, employees cite not being equipped with tools that offered the same functionality by their employers, according to the survey.
As company data flows through personal apps and home networks, malicious actors can now aim at an increased attack surface. In turn, companies without stringent cybersecurity policies lose control and visibility into sensible data that could potentially be leveraged for further attacks.
In the sudden shift to near-total remote work, the deployment of cloud-enabled tools such as collaboration platforms can lead to security configuration missteps, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
