Many employees see security policies as obstacles to getting their work done and regularly circumvent them, according to a survey by EMC’s security division RSA Security.

While 94% of those surveyed said they were familiar with their organisation’s IT security policies, over 50% felt they needed to work around them in order to do their jobs properly and on time.

A further 79% admitted to having taken sensitive corporate information out of the workplace on a laptop, smartphone or USB drive, while 10% confessed to actually losing one of these devices.

The problem is potentially bigger than the results suggest, as the survey sample comprised those who should know better; the 417 resondents were attendees at various security conferences. Worryingly, 46% were in the financial services sector.

A further 65% admitted to frequently using public wireless hotspots to access sensitive corporate information, while 37% said they had unwittingly stumbled into an area of the corporate network they should not have had access to.

In a separate question posed at the RSA’s US event, 31% of delegates also admitted to letting a stranger into their workplace.

Further reading

The inside job High profile data losses are forcing organisations to tackle culprits operating inside the firewal

Security growing complacent Security officers continue to overlook the greatest threat to their organisations – the insider

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