It’s been quite a year. Along with adapting to a pandemic that shut the world inside for 15 months and brought on a seismic shift in social norms, more people than ever are working from home. A YouGov survey of global office workers commissioned by the new security platform, HP Wolf Security, shows that 82% worked from home more since the start of the pandemic, with some 23% of office workers expecting to work from home most of the time even after we “return to normal” (whatever that is).
Which means that hundreds of millions of us are tapping into their employee network through their work-distributed laptops, sure, but also with their personal devices. Not just that, but we’re letting our kids use them for school, for gaming, for streaming content (and we’re often guilty of doing the same!). According to the recent Blurred Lines and Blindspots report by HP on work styles, 76% of office workers say that working from home during COVID-19 has broken the barrier between their personal and professional lives. Half of remote office workers say they now see their work device as their own personal device, with 46% admitting to using their work laptop for “life admin”; 30% say they have let someone else use their work device. Meanwhile 69% of office workers have used their personal laptop or printer for work tasks and activities since the start of the pandemic.
This all amounts to your basic nightmare for IT decision makers (ITDMs), who stand at the frontlines of cyberattacks.
“Users are the point of entry for most attacks — that’s why endpoints account for 70% of successful breaches, with malware almost always being delivered via email attachments, web links, and downloadable files,” says Ian Pratt, global head of Security Personal Systems at HP. “Phishing is of particular concern, with attackers using new techniques such as AI-automated spear-phishing, where an attacker tailors their lures to a specific individual or group.”
