According to the results of a new investigation, workers have a big gap in knowledge of security measures and these unaware employees represent a great risk for their company to be hit by the criminals.

The 2017 State of Privacy and Security Awareness Report involved 1,012 US workers in the survey and revealed that 70% of employees lack a knowledge of security and privacy spheres. It`s better result in comparison with the last year, when the number of unaware employees reached 88%.

The survey contained 31 questions of varying difficulty levels. Based on the quality of answers, participants were referred to such categories as ‘risky,’ ‘novice’, or ‘hero’.

According to this survey, the results were the following: ‘risky’ people accounted for 19% this year in comparison with 16% last year, ‘novice’ workers reduced to 51% this year from 72% last year and the percent of ‘hero’ employees rolls over to 30% this year compared to 12% last year.

The physical security also leaves much to be desired. The majority of the ‘risky’ workers are ready to open the door for unknown person and let him/her in without the check whether an individual has the appropriate documents or any access to a secured area. Besides, this year 62.3% of ‘risky’ respondents are practically sure that it`s ok to use a public Wi-Fi network for working with the company information.

As for the social media, more than 20% of workers, in comparison with 7.5% in the last year, feel like to post information about their company`s upcoming changes on their social accounts.

This year, physical security is one more issue the bosses must be anxious about. The survey revealed that nearly a quarter of employees were ready to open the door for a stranger, even if one doesn`t have the proper documents. The employees don`t think about awful consequences, actually!

The people with a gap in knowledge of physical security reached 24% this year, in comparison with 19% of the last year.

Improvement: during the year employees become more knowledgeable in security and privacy spheres at the working place. Workers improved their knowledge in such fields as incident reporting, identification of malware warning signs, prevention of phishing, cloud computing, working remotely, and identification of personal data.