Some new research has found something surprising about cybersecurity – it turns out that younger employees who are good with technology might actually be a significant weakness when it comes to keeping things secure. It's not the older folks who aren't learning.
Surprised? Let's take a closer look.
A study asked more than 6,500 employees from all over the world about their habits, and the results were pretty alarming.
They found that younger people who work in offices, those who are 40 or younger, tend not to be very careful with their passwords. Can you believe that 34% of them admitted to using their own birth dates as passwords, while only 19% of those over 40 did that?
But there's more to this story.
Younger workers also have a habit of using the same password on lots of different devices. In fact, 38% of them said they do this.
And when it comes to phishing scams – those sneaky emails trying to trick you – a massive 23% of younger folks didn't report the last phishing attempt they got. Why? Because they didn't think it was a big deal.
But don't these young workers understand how serious these security threats are for businesses? Well, not really.
Even though 23% of them recognized that ransomware and 22% saw phishing as a significant threat, their overall attitude toward cybersecurity isn't great.
Here's the real shocker: many people in the survey said their workplaces didn't give them any training on how to stay safe online.
Whether you look at the US (30%), the UK (17%), the Netherlands (32%), Japan (35%), India (31%), Germany (22%), France (43%), Australia (29%), or China (65%), it's clear that many companies are falling short in this area.
So, can we really blame these younger workers when it's pretty evident that businesses aren't doing enough to teach their employees about cybersecurity?
It's about time we stop treating cybersecurity as an afterthought and start making sure everyone in our workplaces, not just the tech experts or the bosses, gets regular training on how to stay safe online.
At the end of the day, it's not just about protecting your business; it's about making the digital world safer for all of us.
If you need help with that, get in touch with us. We can assist you in keeping your digital world secure.