Remote Workers should Enhance Their Security Vigilance

Cisco declared on February 5, 2008 the results of its yearly global research on remote workers' online behavior and security awareness with a warning that these workers are greatly inflicted with security menace. Internetcommunications.tmcnet published this on February 5, 2008.

The study under the supervision of Insight Express surveyed over 2,000 IT professionals and remote workers from various company sizes and industries in ten countries including the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, India, China, Australia, Brazil and the United States.

According to it, opening attachments or e-mails from suspicious or unknown sources is risky although it represents a traditional security risk. A number of remote workers admitted that they continue to open dubious e-mails or their attachments despite being aware of their potential for malware attacks.

The research also found that China is a gross offender with remote workers at 62% who open both suspicious or unknown e-mails and their attachments. But the more disturbing issue is the increasing trend in broadband-adopter countries such as the UK at 48%, Japan at 42%, Australia at 34% and the US at 27%.

During recent years, the IT security industry has performed much better in keeping users informed about the greatest and latest malware attacks, and schemes of social engineering tactics. Despite that, remote workers continue to be victims of the same kind of tricks as before. This probably is because they trust that the more improved security technologies now protect them adequately, said Special Assistant Patrick Gray to the Chief Technology Officer at Cisco. Infoworld published Gray's statement on February 5, 2008.

The study also found that there was an annual 3% increase in the count of remote employees who thought it was alright to surf on their corporate Internet for personal purposes such as online shopping, social collaboration, and downloading music.

The study is particularly significant as the count of remote workers keeps on increasing globally. According to Gartner's report 2007, the global corporate teleworking people that spend a minimum of one day in a month teleworking would likely grow at a compound annual rate of 4.3% during 2007-2011. Internetcommunications.tmcne reported this.

Related article: Remote Workers Not Concerned About Security Threats

» SPAMfighter News - 2/14/2008