Bach Seat

Fortinet (FTNT) released a new study that says that most Gen Y staff members are thwarting their employers’ Bring Your Own Device programs. Fortinet surveyed 3,200 employees between the ages of 21 and 32 on their attitudes and practices around BYOD and found that 51 percent of respondents said they would ignore formal BYOD policies at their organization.  “It’s worrying to see policy contravention so high …” Fortinet VP of Marketing John Maddison said in the study report.

Gen Y staff

The same Fortinet survey revealed that 55 percent said they have been the victims of cyberattacks on their desktops or laptops. The respondents noted that those attacks had affected their productivity and potentially cost them corporate or personal data.

FierceCIO provides another example of staff’s cavalier attitude towards data security from Symantec. According to the Mountain View, CA-based Symantec (SYMC) when it comes to corporate data, employees who feel like they live in a “finder’s keepers” environment, Robert Hamilton, Symantec director of information risk management said. The firm surveyed workers in the U.S. about taking corporate data outside of the workplace if they would use company information in another job and their views on whether that constituted stealing. FierceCIO reports the results of the survey, were not encouraging to IT security professionals and IT management.

Finder’s keepers

• 40% of employees download work files to personal devices,
• 40% of employees plan to use old company information in a new job role,
• 56% of employees do not believe it is a crime to use a competitor’s trade secrets,
• 68% of employees say their company doesn’t take proper steps to protect sensitive information.

Mr. Hamilton summarized, “The attitude is that ownership lies with the person that created it, not with the company that employs them.” He says companies need to do a better job of safeguarding data from employees, especially with the growing popularity of BYOD. Symantec noted,

Only 38 percent of employees say their managers view data protection as a business priority, and 51 percent think it is acceptable to take corporate data because their company does not strictly enforce policies

A survey by mobile file-sharing app provider Workshare provides more evidence of how employees flaunt IT policies by using free file-sharing services to store and share corporate documents from their mobile devices. FierceMobileIT reports that the firm’s survey revealed that 81% of employees access work documents from their mobile devices. A disturbing 72% of workers are using free file-sharing services without authorization from their IT departments.

Fiberlink recently conducted a survey of its customers about what apps they are blacklisting and whitelisting. DropBox appeared at the top of the blacklisted apps lists for both Android and iOS devices. Commenting on the results, Fiberlink CEO Christopher Clark told FierceMobileIT: “I think there are other ways besides DropBox or Box to do apps and content management.”

Work documents on personal devices

Another survey, conducted by Ipsos MORI for Huddle found that 91% of U.S. office workers store work documents on personal devices, such as USB drives, and 38% store documents on consumer file-sharing services.

FierceMobileIT reports that Dropbox is the most used consumer file-sharing service for work document storage and sharing.

• DropBox 16%
• Google (GOOG) Drive 15%
• Apple (AAPL) iCloud 12%.

Patrice Perche, Fortinet’s senior Fred Donovan VP for international sales and support, said in the report:

This year’s research reveals the issues faced by organizations when attempting to enforce policies around BYOD, cloud application usage, and soon the adoption of new connected technologies. The study highlights the greater challenge IT managers face when it comes to knowing where corporate data resides and how it is being accessed.

FierceMobileIT’s Fred Donovan warns that enterprises need to educate their employees to combat the security risks of using consumer file-sharing services. He also says that employers need to offer enterprise-sanctioned file-sharing alternatives. Otherwise, employees will continue to bypass IT policies and put corporate data at risk. Symantec’s Hamilton told FierceCIO that firms need to undergo a cultural shift if they are going to win the battle of protecting their assets from their own staff.

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Sharon Nelson at Ride the Lighting sums up my thoughts on the BYOD thing.

I have never understood the arrogance of this attitude or the failure to appreciate that employers have a duty to impose rules to protect client/customer/proprietary data./proprietary data.

It is common for each succeeding generation to despair of the generation that follows it, but I confess to a certain amount of despair for a generation that is so tied to their mobile devices that they cannot balance their desire to use their devices with the duty owed to the employer to keep work data secure. In a world where young folks cannot seem to keep from checking their phones at weddings and funerals, I guess it is no wonder that they see nothing wrong with willfully disobeying rules imposed at work.

What do you think? Is your data safe from Gen Y staff?

Related articles

• GEN Y Does Not Want to Hear About BYOD Security Measures (huffingtonpost.com)

Ralph Bach has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his Bach Seat about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Email the Bach Seat here.