Are employers putting their business and employees at risk? 9 out of 10 employees say that employers aren’t doing enough to educate their workforce on vital cybersecurity policies.
A survey conducted by iStorage, the award-winning and trusted global leader in PIN-authenticated, hardware-encrypted data storage and cloud encryption devices, found that employees were concerned that their employers weren’t doing enough to educate them on the correct implementation and adherence of the business’s cybersecurity policies.
The recent survey, completed by 600 business/remote employees, IT experts and consumers found that 99% of participants considered backing up data to be a necessary practice, and yet a staggering 98% stated that they found data security to be a genuine concern for them within their workplace.
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The survey explored how backups are currently being undertaken and it highlighted that a quarter of the respondents are storing data within the cloud. Whilst cloud data storage solutions are becoming increasingly popular, employees stating that the cloud has become the backbone of remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, is cloud storage alone sufficient to guarantee data security and GDPR compliance within the workplace at a time when cyberattacks are growing at an exponential rate?
Also revealed in the survey is that 54% of employees who store data within the cloud either don’t have the encrypted or are uncertain as to whether their data within the cloud is encrypted; yet, have no alternative solution in place.
John Michael, CEO of iStorage explains, “Much investment has been made by businesses to ensure GDPR compliance, but ongoing training for the workforce is lacking. More needs to be done to protect employees from unintentionally placing their employer and themselves at risk through negligent non-compliance.” He continues, “The absolute most secure way to keep your data safe is at the source, through encryption at the file level, which protects your business, employees and customers falling victim to the potentially long-lasting effects of a cyberattack as encrypted data is of no value or use to a hacker.”
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It is vital for employers to understand how this knowledge gap with their employees can severely impact their operations. Firstly, it is crucial to ensure that GDPR regulations are consistently met. In the first 9 months of 2020, it was reported that 196 administrative fines had been filed across Europe, totalling an eyewatering £61.4 million (€72 million). In addition, data loss can lead to downtime within an organisation affecting productivity, employee’s wellbeing, business reputation and even the downfall of a business. With approximately 50% of business employees within the iStorage survey admitting they had already experienced downtime as a result of losing data.
“If you are using encryption to secure your cloud accounts and creating two offline encrypted backups, in addition to providing ongoing training to all employees, you can quickly restore your data, minimising the potential loss and damage to the entire business in the event of data loss or theft.” Michael explains.
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