Information and security rarely go hand in hand, and few will be surprised to learn that ongoing lockdowns are making a bad situation worse. Over half of organisations expect their remote workers to expose them to the risk of a data breach, according to a survey conducted last month. Some even went as far as to suggest that staff do not in fact care about data security.

These are the findings of a survey carried out by tech provider, Apricorn, which pointed to a steady increase in this number over the last two years (from 44% in 2018 and 50% in 2019).

In 2019 almost half of respondents (47%) admitted that their remote workers had already knowingly put corporate data at risk of a breach in the last year; this has now dropped slightly to 44%. Apathy continues to be a major problem, with just over a third (34%) of IT leaders saying their remote workers simply don’t care about security – exactly the same percentage as last year – which suggests organisations are struggling to get employees to buy into the security strategy.

Jon Fielding, managing director EMEA, Apricorn, says: "This year, the need for organisations to facilitate effective and secure remote working has been cast into the spotlight to an extent no-one could have anticipated. Our survey shows that while progress has been made in some key areas since 2019, some of the same risks – such as employee apathy or error – remain a problem. In these currently challenging times, when UK workers are being urged to work from home, it’s all the more important that security is a priority for everyone."

Employees unintentionally putting data at risk remains the leading cause of data breach (33%), with third parties mishandling corporate information cited as one of the main causes, at 23%.

Lost or misplaced devices are now the second greatest cause of a data breach – cited by almost a quarter of respondents (24%), up from 17% a year ago.

Conducted at the end of March, the research targeted 100 UK IT decision makers from enterprises within the financial services, IT, manufacturing, business and professional services sectors.

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