Remote Workers Becoming Less Security-Conscious

According to a study released today by Cisco Systems, remote users are engaging in more insecure behavior than they did the previous year.The survey of more than 2,000 people, half IT personnel and half remote workers with access to company computers, found that the latter group tended to think of the Internet as safe than it used to be. "There is a false sense of security among remote workers out there, and it's growing," says Patrick Gray, senior security strategist at Cisco and former FBI investigator who headed up the study project.

The survey respondents were actually more aware of security issues in 2007 than in 2006 (69 percent to 67 percent), but insecure behavior is actually growing anyway. For example, 34 percent of respondents said they still click on suspicious and unknown emails "to see who it's from," and another 6 percent say they also click on the attachments.

Further exacerbating the problem is the blurring of lines between home computing and work computing are beginning to blur. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they access work files from personal devices, including smartphones and PDA, and 48 percent use their work computers to access personal files.

Smaller businesses, which often have less-developed security programs and IT departments to administer them, should be especially wary of these trends.DarkReading