This article is co-authored by Pratim Datta, Ph.D., professor of information systems at 5X, and Joseph Nwankpa, Ph.D., associate professor of information systems and analytics at Miami University. The article was .
Workers who telecommute tend to be more aware of cybersecurity threats than those who spend most of their time in a physical office and are more likely to take action to ward them off, according to .
Our findings are based on survey data collected from 203 participants who recently switched to full-time remote work, as well as from 147 in-office workers, across multiple organizations within the United States. We didn’t collect data on hybrid workers.
We asked employees the same series of questions about their work arrangements as well as their understanding of , and the actions they’ve taken to defend against them.
To account for other factors likely to influence how an employee responds to perceived cybersecurity threats and risks, we controlled for key participant characteristics and various factors, including age, gender, industry type, company size, job position and the duration of remote work. In addition, we tried to ensure the robustness of our data by conferring with other experts and using various statistical techniques.
We found that remote workers, on average, were more mindful of cybersecurity threats and could better recognize safe cybersecurity practices and protection measures compared with office-based employees. Similarly, our data showed that remote workers were more likely to take cybersecurity precautionary measures than their in-office counterparts.
Why might this be the case?
When employees work from the office, they generally expect their organization to provide and deploy security countermeasures to deal with cyber threats and risks. As a result, in-office workers may become complacent about cybersecurity awareness. This could account for in-office workers taking fewer steps to shore up their cybersecurity.
In contrast, the lack of an institutional cybersecurity framework forces remote workers to become more mindful of the risks they may be exposed to.
Why It Matters
And to worm their way into corporate computer networks is via employees – .
During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when much of the workforce was sent home due to lockdowns, . In cybersecurity jargon, it increased the “,” or the sum of all ways an organization’s network is exposed to potential security risks. whether employees working remotely would take cybersecurity seriously.
With remote work becoming increasingly the norm for many companies, our research suggests that this risk isn’t as great as once feared
Cybersecurity training video for workers.
What Still Isn’t Known
We still need to determine whether heightened cybersecurity awareness and precautionary behavior among remote workers will diminish over time. Research suggests that cybersecurity awareness acquired through training and knowledge programs .
As remote working arrangements become more mainstream, does security complacency set in for these workers? It is important to know how long the increased cybersecurity awareness will enable precaution-taking behavior and how remote workers can renew and sustain this vigilance.
Learn more about Kent State’s Department of Information Systems and Business Analytics.