Only 13% of Government Workers Take Personal Responsibility for Cybersecurity

 

 

Public sector employees in the U.S. have little concern about their personal cybersecurity responsibilities, according to a survey.  Just 13% of government employees believe they have complete personal responsibility for the security of their work devices or information, the report carried out by analytics firm YouGov and published by security firm Dtex Systems said.  Over 48% of those surveyed said they had no responsibility at all, believing the securing of data to be squarely the remit of IT professionals.

 

Roughly half of respondents believed that being hacked was inevitable no matter what protective measures they took, while 43% simply didn't believe they could be hacked.  Few people surveyed seemed to take seriously the likelihood and frequency of cyber threats - one in three employees believed they were more likely to be struck by lightning than have their work data compromised. M

 

When looking at what government employees feared most, the survey said: "Only 14 percent report being afraid of someone infiltrating their organization and stealing files, trailing far behind potential scenarios such as a government collapse or food poisoning, and ranking it just three percentage points higher than alien invasion." (CNBC, 3/16/18)