The employment marketplace is getting more competitive. Many companies are looking for someone 24 – 29 years old with 30+ years of experience so they can add the most value to their company with minimal risk.
How can you realistically identify which employees are your biggest security risk? Aruba Networks surveyed over 11,500 employees across 23 countries to find out. And as the saying goes, the numbers don’t lie.
5 Statistics You Can’t Ignore Who Are Your Company’s Biggest Security Risk
1. The Weaker Sex
Males are more likely to lose data than females. Men are 20% more likely to misuse a smartphone and lose personal or client data and 40% less likely than females to fall victim to identity theft.
Read more: How employee use of mobile technology puts your network security at risk
2. The Young Ones
Those aged between 25 – 34 years old are twice as likely to become identity theft victims or lose client data than someone over 55.
3. More Money = More Problems
Surprisingly, those on higher incomes posed greater risk. Employees on $18K or less per year are half as likely to lose sensitive company data than those earning $60K.
Ironically, those earning over $75k were three times more likely to give out their password if offered money than employees making less than $18K.
4. Risky Business
Scarily, the finance industry has serious problems.
2 out of 5 people surveyed who work in financial institutions admitted to losing company data through mobile mismanagement. That’s 25% higher than the average across all industries surveyed.
5. Better Education Needed
Nearly a third of education sector workers store passwords, login details and other sensitive data on a sheet of paper. Of all industries surveyed, those working in education are least likely to password protect personal smartphones.
Conclusion
What conclusions can we draw from this? Saying you want to hire women over 35 years old and pay them less to reduce your company’s IT risks is likely to have the opposite effect. That’s not a good risk management strategy!
Know and Understand
Show employees why you have security measures in place and how to use them. Also, teach employees about how their online behaviour can impact on your business, and the consequences of data breaches.
For the self-obsessing younger generation more likely to engage in risky behaviour, they need to see how downloading an app from outside official app stores or opening emails from unknown senders will impact them as a part of your business.
If you want to learn more about how to protect yourself online, you can enroll in our free cyber security email series. Just enter your email in the form below and you’ll start receiving the first email right away.
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Set Security Rules
Employee IT security policy should be well set out so everyone knows what’s expected of them. In some cases, these rules can be enforced with usage restrictions or twostage authentication to prevent employees from becoming lazy or careless with regards IT.
Keep It Up
Do you know how much technology is released in a year? The world of IT is constantly updating, so refreshing your employees once a year on good practice and their IT responsibilities isn’t going to cut it.
Scheduling quarterly meetings, or something more regular to update your system and remind employees of the importance of IT security will protect your business by reducing risky behaviour.
Keen to understand more about Online Security Protection for New Zealand businesses? Download our latest eBook – it’s FREE!
