Cybersecurity Has Taken A Backseat To Business Continuity

HP’s Wolf Security report highlights how employees are being impacted by increased cybersecurity restrictions, as well as the burden these measures are having on IT.

The “Rebellions & Rejection” report revealed that 76% of IT teams believe that “security took a back seat to continuity during the pandemic.”

Additionally, the report showed that 91% of respondents felt pressured “to compromise security for business continuity,” while another 83% shared the belief that remote working has contributed to the increased risk of a network breach.

“Cybersecurity teams should no longer be burdened with the weight of securing the business solely on their shoulders, cybersecurity is an end-to-end discipline in which everyone needs to engage,” added Joanna Burkey, Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at HP.

Not only are certain security measures burdening IT teams, it’s also frustrating office workers whose work flow becomes disrupted by security restrictions. 

“If security is too cumbersome and weighs people down, then people will find a way around it,”  said Ian Pratt, global head of security for personal systems at HP. “Instead, security should fit as much as possible into existing working patterns and flows, with technology that is unobtrusive, secure-by-design and user-intuitive.”

In fact, 37% of office workers said that security policies were too restrictive. However, this sentiment seemed to vary depending on age, with 54% of workers aged between 18 and 24 stating they were more concerned about meeting deadlines than potentially exposing the company to a data breach.