As social distancing measures become common and workers adjust to their new professional environments, even from their own living rooms, there is potential for private and working lives to blur into one. In fact, half (51%) of those working from home who started to watch more adult content admit they did so on the same devices they use for work-related purposes. This is just one of the key findings from Kaspersky’s new ‘How Covid-19 changed the way people work’ report.
The ‘new normal’ that workers are now facing is starting to have an impact on their work-life balance. Nearly a third (31%) of workers said they are spending more of their time working than they did before. However, 46% said they have increased the amount of time they spend on personal activity. This particular change may have come about because workers are now not having to commute or travel as much than they were before.
The report also revealed that it has become harder for workers to separate working and personal activity, especially when it comes to IT. Worryingly for businesses, 51% of workers who admit they have started watching more adult content since working from home, say they have done so on devices they use for work-related purposes. Nearly a fifth (18%) of workers even do this on devices provided to them by their employers, with 33% admitting to watching adult content on their personal devices that they also use to do their work.
Additionally, 55% of workers say they are reading more news now. While this is understandable, 60% of this activity is done on devices that are used for work. This can potentially lead to malware infections if employees do not pay attention to the websites they visit.
“Organisations cannot just fulfill all user requests, such as allowing staff to use any services as they want to. It is necessary to find a balance between user convenience, business necessity and security, says Andrey Evdokimov, CISO, Kaspersky. “To achieve this, a company should provide access to services based on the principle of only supplying minimal, necessary privileges, implement a VPN and use secure and approved corporate systems. These types of software may have certain restrictions that slightly reduce usability, but offer greater assurances in providing security measures.”
