Almost two-fifths of businesses have stated that they have dismissed employees during the COVID-19 crisis due to their involvement in breaches of cybersecurity.
This was discovered by Centrify, a software company that found that 39 per cent of business decision-makers have admitted to firing staff due to a breach of cybersecurity policy. This is despite, 65 per cent of companies making substantial changes to their cybersecurity policy in response to the pandemic.
Over half (58 per cent) of companies believe that employees are more likely to try and circumvent company security practices when remote working. In response to this, 57 per cent of business decision-makers are implementing more measures to authenticate staff, like biometric data checks, such as fingerprint and facial recognition technology to ensure the right employee is accessing the right files, applications and accounts.
Another way in which 55 per cent of businesses are trying to prevent breaches is by planning to ban staff from using personal devices to remote work.
Andy Heather, vice president, Centrify, said:
With more people than ever working from home and left to their own devices, it’s inevitable that some will find security work arounds, such as using personal laptops and not changing passwords, in order to maximise productivity. It’s also possible that the changes in security procedures are not being communicated well to employees, and many are practising unsafe internet usage without even realising.
The reality is the weakest link in any organisation continues to be the human element. Combatting this issue starts from the top. CIOs and business decision makers must implement strict and transparent, cloud enabled and identity-centric security solutions. This will allow companies to quickly and safely deploy scalable security privileged access management measures, which make it impossible for an employee to access company networks, applications and data, unless they are following correct procedures.
In order to collate these results, Censuswide, survey consultants asked the opinion of 200 UK business decision-makers on behalf of Centrify.
Darius is the editor of HRreview. He has previously worked as a finance reporter for the Daily Express. He studied his journalism masters at Press Association Training and graduated from the University of York with a degree in History.
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