Math

Individual Assignment #2

Three employee behaviours that pose large risks to businesses are:

1. Unauthorized application use

2. Misuse of corporate computers

3. Remote worker security

Another two that shouldn’t go without mention are unauthorized physical and network access along with misuse of passwords.

Description of these behaviours and some statistics taken from a survey from 1000 IT professionals and end users 1000 end users done by InsightExpress Inc. reveled the following:

1. Unauthorized application use: 70 percent of IT professionals believe the use of unauthorized programs resulted in as many as half of their companies' data loss incidents.

2. Misuse of corporate computers: 44 percent of employees share work devices with others without supervision.

3. Remote worker security: 46 percent of employees admitted to transferring files between work and personal computers when working from home.

Risk to the business as a result of the behaviour

Risks posed to the business as a result of these behaviours include “loss of Corporate Intellectual property, such as proprietary product blueprints, financial data, and merger and acquisition plans. It can also damage a company's reputation, undermine its brand, or jeopardize its competitive edge Breaches of regulatory requirements for handling sensitive customer data can reduce customer confidence and lead to fines.” 1

Recommendations to counteract risks of these behaviours

Reasoning for these behaviours were described by the following sentiments. 52% said: “because I wanted to visit that web site regardless of the company’s policy.” 35% said: “It’s none of my companies business –they should respect my privacy.” 19% said: “No one will know if I do.”

Most of these responses seem to be stemming from disregard for company policy or lack of understanding of how their actions effect the business they work for.

Some tactics a firm could implement to help protect company data could be to

1. Introduce a...