Image: VOLKER WEIHBOLD
“60 percent of all cyber attacks in companies happen through employees,” said Gottfried Tonweber, head of cyber and data security at EY Austria, when presenting the study. The survey surveyed 1,000 employees of Austrian companies with 20 or more employees who almost always use a laptop or desktop PC for their work.
The number of cyber attacks has increased over the past few years, said Tonweber, without giving specific figures. There are several reasons for this: firstly, criminals are becoming more and more sophisticated, secondly, there are more mobile devices, and thirdly, work devices are also being used more frequently for private purposes. According to the survey, 24 percent read private emails on their work devices every day.
One in three respondents has experienced cyberattacks, and one in four cannot distinguish fake email messages from real ones.
Tonweber and Bernhard Zacherl, cybersecurity expert at EY, see a need to catch up when it comes to passwords and employee training. Four out of five respondents continue to use simple passwords to log in to their work devices, and more than half use the same password for multiple accounts. Multi-factor authentication with multiple security levels offers better protection, said Zacherl.
Only a quarter of those surveyed feel adequately prepared against cyber attacks. This is also because training and further education measures regarding cybersecurity are hardly an issue in many companies, criticized Tonweber. In the past twelve months, 60 percent of the employees surveyed had not received any training.
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