Worker Vacations Pose Security Risks for Businesses
Bosses may want to be careful what they wish for when it comes to expecting employees to work through their vacation. New research has found that workers are not accessing their work networks securely when they are on vacation.
Overall, 77 percent of respondents say they do not have an office network when they are on vacation. However, that is not stopping many workers from accessing work files out of the office. To do this, 32 percent of workers say they access work files via insecure cloud-sharing services like Dropbox, Google Drive or Skydrive. Workers are also putting sensitive work information and files at risk by bringing work computers or business files away on vacation. Just 23 percent of workers say they access files through their corporate network.
Those lax security procedures have the potential to hurt companies in a big way, especially since 59 percent of workers admit to working during vacation. Common work tasks during vacation include checking email and answering phone calls.
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Technology is both the reason why workers have been able to more easily work while on vacation and the reason for the security concerns about it. Smartphones and personal laptops are the two most popular devices workers use while on vacation. Tablets and work computers are also helping workers to work on vacation.
"The information age has enabled unprecedented levels of employee productivity from the corner office to the factory floor, but it has also created a dependency on the applications, files and data that employees depend on everyday to get their job done," said Todd Krautkremer, vice president of marketing at Pertino, a provider of cloud services to small and medium-size business that conducted the research. "This can actually lead to anxiety when an employee is disconnected for a protracted period of time."
Workers aren’t fully against having access to technology and devices while on vacation, though. Nearly half of respondents say they are less stressed on vacation since they know that they are never too far away from their office and personal devices.
The research was based on more than 1,000 responses.
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