'Many employees defy security policies'

Mumbai: Globally, many of the employees either defy or do not always adhere to corporate security policies. One in 10 employees (11 percent) in India admits that they never or hardly ever abided by corporate security policies. Of all the countries surveyed, France (84 percent) has the most employees who admitted defying policies, whether rarely or routinely. It was revealed when a study on data leakage and corporate security policies conducted by InsightExpress tried to explore the prevalence and effectiveness of corporate security policies within companies and the reasons why employees break or comply with them.

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Commissioned by networking firm Cisco, the study reveals that employees often defy or ignore the security policies. More than half of the employees surveyed admitted that they do not always adhere to corporate security policies.

Though 77 percent of the world businesses have security policies in place to protect themselves against data breaches, those who do not have security policies and are vulnerable to hacking given the trends of mobility, collaboration, and workforces 'without borders,' are in the process of setting official policies for how and when to access corporate data, applications and networks.

One of the most noteworthy findings was the gap between the number of employees and IT professionals who are aware of policies. Depending on the country, the number of IT professionals who knew a policy existed was 20 to 30 percent higher than the number of employees. The largest gaps (31 percent) were in the United States, Brazil and Italy. This finding raises the question of if and how IT communicates policies to employees.

The majority of employees believe their companies' policies are unfair. This is the case in eight of the total 10 countries; only employees in Germany and the U.S. did not agree. As businesses become more collaborative, spurred by the adoption of interactive Web 2.0 applications, video and mobile devices, the desire to protect employees as they embrace new technologies without frustrating them with rigid policies becomes a diplomatic balancing act for IT departments.

Eleven percent of employees said IT never communicates or educates them on security policies. This finding is especially prevalent in Europe, where the United Kingdom (25 percent) and France (20 percent) featured the greatest number of employees making this claim. When IT communicates policies to employees, they often use non-verbal and indirect vehicles - email, messages during computer login processes, and voicemail.