As per the 2011 Parent-Teen Internet Safety Report of GFI Software, in a survey of 1,070 adults and teenagers, at least 90% of parents who have work computers reveal that they have taken them home and used them for non-work related purposes, and 37% of these said they let their teens use them as well.
With so many employees taking laptops to their homes and allowing their teen children use them in an insecure environment before taking them back to their work place, the chances of security incidents relating to virus and malware are very high. The teen kids visit social networking sites and other similar sites which act as vectors for malicious software.
65% of parents said that a virus had infected at least one of their home computers, and 47% of teens said they had been infected by a virus while using a computer at home.
In addition, the survey found that only 28% of parents who have anti-virus software said they update their virus definitions daily, and 24% were unsure if they are updating these definitions at all. It is generally observed that many PC users do not update their anti-virus programs with latest definitions. An AV program is only as good as its last set of definitions.
To conclude, when those laptops leave the enterprise and go home with employees, they are encountering a very different security situation. Compare that to a typical enterprise security environment, which is not perfect but has a lot more going for it than the typical home user.
The report has given the following key areas of improvement to protect the laptops and the data residing in them:
- Education on the need to have antivirus software installed and up to date on their computers.
- Education about the potential dangers of visiting adult websites, which are often used by cyber criminals as malware-delivery vehicles.
- Education about the danger of inappropriate content in general – and how the photo a teen posts today in a social networking site could come back to haunt them when they apply to college or to a company.
- Education about proper communications etiquette, with a focus on online bullying and “stranger danger.”
- Education on responsible use of employers’ computers so irresponsible home usage does not impact ones professional livelihood.
Employees of corporations should get themselves and their kids educated on the above key areas to protect their employers’ information assets.