Study: More Digital Reliance Leads to Careless Security Side Effects
The pandemic-led, widespread move to digital-first interactions has also resulted in people sacrificing privacy and good security practices for convenience. Poor password choices, a rise in costly ransomware incidents and the reuse of credentials across services, all have become bad personal security habits that employers need to worry about carrying over to the workplace.
That’s according to a new survey — “IBM Consumer Survey: Security Side Effects of the Pandemic” — that involved more than 22,000 individuals across 22 markets, in an effort to see what impact the pandemic has had on consumer security behaviors.
The report found that people created an average of 15 new accounts each during the pandemic, and 82 percent of respondents said they reused passwords across their accounts. And 44 percent of respondents said they have no plans to delete or deactivate those new accounts, resulting in an increased digital footprint going forward, and thus a larger attack surface for cybercriminals.
More than half of millennials surveyed said they would happily place an order using a potentially insecure app or website rather than make a call or visit a location in person. And nearly a third of all respondents said they keep track of all these new passwords by simply writing them down.
“The pandemic led to a surge in new online accounts, but society’s growing preference for digital convenience may come at a cost to security and data privacy,” said Charles Henderson, global managing partner and head of IBM Security X-Force. “Organizations must now consider the effects of this digital dependence on their security risk profile. With passwords becoming less and less reliable, one way that organizations can adapt, beyond multi-factor authentication, is shifting to a zero trust approach – applying advanced AI and analytics throughout the process to spot potential threats, rather than assuming a user is trusted after authentication.”
According to the report, nearly 60 percent of adults said they expect to spend less than five minutes setting up a new digital account.
To access the complete report, click here.