India's offices consuming Adult-erated content! Despite its obvious risks

PUNE, INDIA: The state of cyber-risk awareness takes a gloomy shade when we hear a survey pointing that although 65 per cent of global respondents view using a new application without the IT department’s consent as a serious cyber-security risk to the business, 26 per cent admitted doing so. Turns out that in India (as per the given survey again), 30 per cent of respondents used new applications without IT’s permission, compared to 22 per cent in China and Korea, and just 14 per cent in Australia.

Obvious risks such as opening emails from unverified senders still happen at work. Nearly one out of three (28 per cent) of Indian employees open email attachments from unverified senders, even though over four out of five (82 per cent) see it as a serious risk, whereas Korean (63 per cent) businesses view the threat less seriously yet open far less unsolicited emails, at 11 percent.

Over half of the Indian respondents (57 per cent) use social media sites for personal reasons at work – a serious risk to businesses, as cyber criminals hide malware on shortened links and exploit encrypted traffic to deliver payloads.

While globally, six per cent of respondents still admitted viewing adult content on work devices, China ranked the highest with nearly one in five (19 per cent) employees admitting to viewing adult content at work, compared to India and Australia at seven per cent and two percent respectively.

Pornography continues to be one of the most popular methods of hiding malware or malicious content. Even though awareness is high of the threat posed by adult content sites, workers are still visiting these potentially dangerous sites. The survey found that at 19 per cent, China has the worst record for viewing adult content sites on a work device, with Mexico (10 per cent) and the UK (nine per cent) not far behind. India stands fifth amongst respondents from 11 countries at seven per cent for this behaviour.

These are findings from a global research study done by Blue Coat Systems, Inc., across 1580 respondents spanning 11 countries that highlighted a global trend of employees ignoring cyber risks while at work. Results from the survey heavily insinuate that universally, workers visit inappropriate websites while at work despite typically being fully aware of the risks to their companies.

The research, conducted by independent research firm Vanson Bourne, also found the actions of employees at odds with their awareness of the growing cyber threats facing the workplace. In addition, this risky behavior can leave both sensitive corporate and personal data open to being stolen and used immediately, stored for future use, or sold into a thriving black market where compromised corporate and personal identities are traded globally.

In India, technology is deemed as one of the top three forces that significantly help productivity within the workforce thereby enabling the ability to initiate more customer-focussed initiatives for an organisation. However, over half of total respondents from India (51 per cent) recognize that technology initiatives leave an organisation exposed to security vulnerabilities whereas 26 per cent feel that this is not the case. Phishing still leads as the preferred mode of being a malware carrier.

Remarkably, an overwhelming 79 per cent of respondents from India agree that they would encourage deploying new technologies that would help achieve business goals even if it would expose the organisation to higher risk. While 63 per cent of Indian companies recognise that in addition to purchasing additional security products, it is also important to modify security policies as per need. Additionally, unique to the average global response of 37 per cent, 69 per cent of the respondents from India believe that it is beneficial to hire a security analyst.