About 46 per cent of employees in the UAE have previously had a dispute with IT staff about the importance or frequency of updating their work devices. Surprisingly, IT teams tend to agree with such demands and let 76 per cent of staff skip installing updates on certain software or OS at all. This was revealed in a study commissioned by Kaspersky to explore workers’ attitudes and habits toward updates.
Updates not only bring new functionality and fix bugs, but also address security vulnerabilities. And once a security update is released, malefactors know about these issues. That is why patch management is essential for corporate security. However, some staff members are reluctant to update their work devices, meaning that there are vulnerable computers, laptops and smartphones in the corporate network.
Worryingly, these disagreements bring about the desired results for employees. Respondents who argued with IT about updates were asked two questions – whether they were allowed to skip updates (76 per cent said they were) or whether they were allowed to choose what to update (the same 70 per cent chose this option).
Employees may request these options because they are afraid that the time spent updating may affect their productivity. More than half of respondents are actually distracted from work because of updates: 30 per cent take a break from what they were doing and 11 per cent just wait patiently at their desk. Difficulties don’t end at the installation stage, as 44 per cent of employees agree that learning new versions of software is a waste of time that could be spent doing their job.
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Overall, 51 per cent of respondents stated that they are less concerned about updating their work devices than personal ones, suggesting that keeping work devices up to date is an insignificant consideration.
“We recommend employees regularly update their devices, it will not only keep them protected, but each update takes just a few minutes. This short downtime can be used to recharge the body and mind without any harm to business processes. For example, employees can use a short, simple set of exercises from the cheat sheet created by Kaspersky. It can be sent to colleagues, so they can print it out and take a look once updates are underway,” comments Elena Molchanova, Head of Business Development, Kaspersky Security Awareness Trainings.
