Fortinethas published a global research revealing the growing appetite of “Generation Y” employees to contravene corporate policies governing the use of own devices, personal cloud storage accounts and new technologies such as smart watches, Google Glass and connected cars.
Based on findings from an independent 20-country survey of 3,200 (908 of them in Asia) employees aged 21-32 conducted during October 2013, the research showed a 21% increase in the willingness to break usage rules in Asia compared to a similar Fortinet survey conducted last year.
The new research also describes the extent to which the Gen-Y have been victims of cybercrime on their own devices, their ‘threat literacy’ and their widespread practice for storing corporate assets on personal cloud accounts.
Despite respondents’ positivity about their employers’ provisions for BYOD policy, with 48% agreeing this ‘empowers’ them, in total, 46% stated they would contravene any policy in place banning the use of personal devices at work or for work purposes.
This alarming propensity to ignore measures designed to protect employer and employee alike carries through into other areas of personal IT usage. 43% of Asian respondents using their own personal cloud storage (e.g. DropBox) accounts for work purposes said they would break any rules brought in to stop them. On the subject of emerging technologies such as Google Glass and smart watches, more than half (55%) would contravene any policy brought in to curb the use of these at work.
When asked how long it would take for wearable technologies such as smart watches and Google Glass to become widespread at work or for work purposes, 20% said ‘immediately’ and a further 39% when costs come down. Only 3% of the Asian respondents disagreed that the technologies would become widespread.
About 90% of the sample has a personal account for at least one cloud storage service with DropBox accounting for 32% of the total sample. 72% of personal account holders have used their accounts for work purposes. 15% of this group admits to storing work passwords using these accounts, 19% financial information, 25% critical private documents like contracts/business plans, while more than a third (39%) store customer data.
Almost one third (32%) of the Asian cloud storage users sampled stated they fully trust the cloud for storing their personal data, with only 6% citing aversion through lack of trust.
When asked about devices ever being compromised and the resulting impact, over 56% of responses indicated an attack on personally owned PCs or laptops, with around half of these impacting on productivity and/or loss of personal and/or corporate data.
Attacks were far less frequent on smartphones (27%), despite the sample reporting a higher level of ownership of smartphones than for laptops and PCs. www.telecomasia.net/tag/smartphones.
The same percentage was observed for tablets (27%), which were less commonly owned than laptops and PCs.
Among one of the worrying findings of the research, 12% of respondents said they would not tell their employer if a personal device they used for work purposes became compromised.
MORE COVERAGE OF CLOUD COMPUTING