When it comes to cybersecurity in the workplace, young employees don't really seem to care, putting their organization at risk, according to new research.
Surveying around 1,000 workers using devices provided by their employers, professional services firm EY found that employees at Gen Z companies were more apathetic toward cybersecurity than their Boomer counterparts in adhering to security policies. cyber from your employer.
This despite the fact that four in five (83%) of all respondents said they understood their employer's security protocol.
password recycling
When it comes to implementing mandatory IT upgrades, for example, 58% of Gen Zers and 42% of Millennials would ignore them for as long as possible. Less than a third (31%) of Generation X and only 15% of Baby Boomers said they did the same.
Youth apathy extends to password reuse (opens in a new tab) between private and work accounts. A third of Gen Z workers and Millennials surveyed admitted this, compared to less than a quarter of all Gen Xers and baby boomers.
Nearly half of Gen Z and millennials "would likely accept web browser cookies on their work devices all the time or frequently," compared to 31% of Gen X workers and 18% of baby workers. boomers.
“Organizations have an immediate need to review their security strategy with human behavior at the core,” said Tapan Shah, cybersecurity consultant at EY America.
Some say that the apathy of young people towards technology is because they are too familiar with technology and never run out of it.
Without a doubt, being too tech-savvy makes a company's younger employees a prime target for cybercriminals looking to exploit any security loopholes.
If an organization's cybersecurity practices are not strictly adhered to, threat actors can compromise huge networks with simple social engineering attacks.
As the recent attacks on Uber and Rockstar Games have shown (opens in a new tab), a good social engineer doesn't need to be technically savvy to leak sensitive company and customer data, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. dollars in mitigations and fines. .