Employees are found to be engaged in unsafe online behavior in a survey

A survey conducted on over 400 full-time employees in the U.S suggests that employees tend to engage in the unsafe online behavior despite understanding the consequences. The study by Spanning Cloud Apps finds that many are negligent about cybersecurity. They are under-prepared for the increasing instances of cyber attacks like ransomware, phishing etc. According to the survey, more than 55 percent of people admit to clicking links they don’t recognize, 59 percent admitted that they would not care enough and allow their fellow colleagues to use their work computer, while 34 percent are not even able to identify any insecure websites.

Though a large number of participants of the survey recognize the unfamiliar URLs from popular websites like Facebook, Twitter etc. and potential malicious links such as bit.ly, still a small percent click on those unsafe links. More than half of the employees who polled in the survey admitted that they shop from their work computer. When they were demonstrated an insecure e-commerce window, 34 percent thought that the website was actually secure. Remaining employees who indicated the site was insecure were able to correctly identify a broken padlock as being the sign of an unsafe site.

“While we are encouraged to see that employees are becoming more risk-averse, and most can identify unsecured sites or phishing emails, these results show that there is still a concerning gap between what users say they understand and how they actually behave," says Mat Hamlin, VP of Products at Spanning.