A new study finds most employees feel more productive at home and want to continue even after it’s safe to return to the office—but poor security practices could force businesses to reconsider the long-term viability of remote work.

Despite these challenges, workers recognize the benefits of remote work, including saving time on commuting (32%), being able run errands (24%), and catching up on household chores between meetings (23%).

Researchers from CyberArk, which conducted the survey, note that the pandemic has been the largest test yet for distributed work. Organizations need to reinforce best practices and implement user-friendly policies, while employees need to understand and be receptive to those policies.

At home practices that increase risk
In the study, 67% of respondents said they found workarounds to corporate security policies in order to be more productive. Workarounds included sending work documents to personal email addresses, sharing passwords, and installing rogue applications—all major security sins.

Family disruptions and ‘Zoom fatigue’ 
As the pandemic forced more of our in-person lives into virtual environments, remote workers have had to overcome several challenges to balance their work and personal lives.  More than 75% admitted to technical issues when connecting to corporate systems. Also, 45% cite disruption from family and pets as the biggest challenge of remote work, followed by balancing work and personal life (43%) and “Zoom fatigue” (34%).

Security training ignored
Over half of those surveyed said they had received remote-work specific security training, yet:

69% admit to using corporate devices for personal use.

57% allow other members of their household to use their corporate devices for activities like schoolwork, gaming, and shopping (a 185% increase from last year)

82% admit to reusing passwords, a 12% increase from last year

© National Security Institute, Inc. www.nsi.org