Employees are consistently working around information technology security policies to use unsupported devices and applications and 71% of respondents say that overly strict security policies have a negative impact on hiring and retaining employees under age 30, according to a new survey by Cisco.
The survey, which polled 500 IT security professionals across the US, Germany, Japan, China and India, showed that the consumer influence on enterprise IT is growing and that more employees are bringing personal devices and applications into the network, presenting new business opportunities and security challenges.
According to the survey, more than half of respondents have determined that their employees use unsupported applications, including social networking (68%), collaborative (47%), peer to peer (47%) and Cloud (33%). Nearly half (41%) of the respondents have determined that employees have been using unsupported devices, and more than one-third of that number say they have had a breach or loss of information due to unsupported network devices.
Cisco said that about half of the IT respondents say that they are likely to allow personal devices on the network in the next 12 months and 7% already support personal devices. More than half listed social networking as one of the top three biggest security risks to their organisation, while one in five consider it the highest risk.
Fred Kost, director of security solutions at Cisco, said: "As the lines between personal and business computing increasingly blur, it is becoming clear that employees are going to use social networking and personal devices whether permitted or not.
"The best strategic approach is to focus less on restricting usage and more on effective solutions to ensure highly secure, responsible use."
