1 in 4 Employees Have Experienced a Cyber-Attack or Data Breach

By MTS Staff Writer On Sep 19, 2018

New research by 247meeting has uncovered worrying lapses in workplace security, with senior management often being the biggest culprits.

A quarter of senior managers have experienced a stranger on a conference call
26% of employees with access to customer data haven’t been trained on GDPR
Over a third of employees don’t know where their security policy is saved
Almost half of employees admit to using technology tools to communicate at work without them being password protected

Despite the huge potential fines for their company, 1 in 4 employees with access to customer data admit they haven’t been trained on GDPR. The top five industries that haven’t been trained on GDPR:

Hospitality and Events Management (55%)
Media and Internet (45%)
Marketing, Advertising and PR (44%)
Engineering and Manufacturing (41%)
Property and Construction (40%)

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Permanent remote workers are the least likely to have been trained on GDPR (42% not trained).

Shockingly, a quarter of employees have experienced either a data breach, cyber-attack or both, during their careers. Top five sectors affected:

Sector	Experienced data breach	Experienced cyber-attack	Experienced both	(Combined)
Information research and analysis	27%	27%	18%	73%
Law enforcement and security	7%	48%	10%	66%
Environment and agriculture	5%	40%	10%	55%
Leisure, sport and tourism	7%	37%	4%	48%
Business, consulting and management	17%	13%	8%	38%

25% of senior managers have experienced a stranger on a conference call. The same amount also confess to sharing their conference call PIN information with colleagues, despite discussing employee grievances and sensitive business issues on their calls.

Gavan Doherty, CEO at 247meeting discusses these risks: “We were initially shocked that so many senior managers had experienced a cyber-attack or data breach, yet since they were the ones more willing to share conference call PINs and leave their computers unlocked when not at their desk, the results aren’t that surprising.

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In light of the GDPR laws I think it is important for all companies to be reminded that customer data as well as company data needs to be protected by employees.”

46% of employees admit to using technology tools to communicate at work without knowing whether they are all password protected.

Over a third of employees don’t know where to access their company’s IT security policy and only 13% are confident that they remember all of it.

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The top five industries least likely to know where their security policy is saved:

Sector	Don’t know where security policy is saved
Marketing, advertising and PR	64%
Hospitality and events management	56%
Performing arts	55%
Law enforcement and security	52%
Publishing and journalism	50%