التكنولوجيا وأخبارها بوابة الإمارات لتكنولوجيا المعلومات والإتصالات
Nearly a third of employees spend more time working than they did before, new Kaspersky study reveals
As social distancing measures become common and
workers adjust to their new professional environments,
even from their own living rooms, there is potential for
private and working life to blur into one. Kaspersky’s new
How COVID-19 changed the way people work report
reveals how quarantine influences the way people work
from home.
The ‘new normal’ that workers are now facing is starting to
have an impact on their work-life balance. Nearly a third
(31%) of workers said they are spending more of their time
working than they did before. However, 46% said they
have increased the amount of time they spend on personal
activity. This particular change may have come about
because workers are now not having to commute or travel
as much than they were before.
The report also revealed that it has become harder for
workers to separate working and personal activity,
especially when it comes to IT. 55% of workers say they
are reading more news now than they were before they
started working from home. While this is understandable
because people will want to stay updated with the latest
coronavirus developments, 60% of this activity is done on
devices that are used for work. This can though potentially
lead to malware infections if employees do not pay
attention to the resources and websites they visit.
Workers are also developing a habit of using their personal
services for working purposes – increasing the potential
risks from shadow IT, including the disclosure of sensitive
information. For instance, 42% of employees use personal
email accounts for work-related matters, and 49% admit
their usage has increased when working from home. 38%
use personal messengers that have not been approved by
their IT departments, with 60% of them do it more often in
their new circumstances.
“Organizations cannot just fulfill all user requests, such as
allowing staff to use any services as they want to. It is
necessary to find a balance between user convenience,
business necessity and security. To achieve this, a company
should provide access to services based on the principle of
only supplying minimal, necessary privileges, implement a
VPN and use secure and approved corporate systems. These
types of software may have certain restrictions that slightly
reduce usability, but offer greater assurances in providing
security measures,” – comments Andrey Evdokimov, Chief
Information Security Officer at Kaspersky.
To ensure businesses do all they can to keep their
employees and corporate data safe, Kaspersky recommends
employers follow these measures:
• Schedule basic security awareness training for your
employees. This can be done online and cover essential
practices, such as account and password management,
email security, endpoint security. Kaspersky and Area9
Lyceum have prepared a free module to help staff work
safely from home
• Ensure devices, software, applications and services are
kept updated with the latest patches
• Install proven protection software, such as Kaspersky
Endpoint Security Cloud, on all endpoints, including mobile
devices, and switch on firewalls. Any solution used should
include protection from web threats and email fishing
For workers and users at home who have to work from
their personal devices, Kaspersky advises:
• Using a reliable security solution, such as Kaspersky Total
Security, for comprehensive protection from a wide range
of threats.
• Only downloading educational and entertaining content
strictly from trusted sources
For more information about the impact working from home
has had on workers and to read the report in full, visit
https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/report-covid-wfh/.
