Czech your cybersecurity: One in eight employees watch porn at the office

Cybersecurity is more important now than it has ever been. 2020 saw a marked increase in cyber-attacks against Czech institutions, organizations and companies, including ransomware attacks on the Czech healthcare sector amid the Covid pandemic.

New data provided by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky will therefore pose significant concerns for Czech businesses. The study shows that one in eight employees of large companies are in the habit of watching pornography on their work computer. Porn websites are visited on work computers by 15 percent of men and fewer than 10 percent of women, according to the poll of over 1,000 people.

“Adult content sites can often be a source of malicious software and annoying adware. As such, users should definitely not visit them from their workstations, through which they are connected to their corporate network,” said Miroslav Kořen, Kaspersky General Manager for Eastern Europe.

Employers can counter the threats posed by such risky activity by ensuring all employees have adequate security software installed on their work devices, as well as on personal ones connected to work networks. Yet Kaspersky data suggests only half of Czech employers set clear rules for accessing work files from personal devices, while six out of ten make sure their employees have adequate security systems installed on their home computers.

It is likely that the shift to home office working patterns may have contributed to increased levels of extra-curricular browsing. Around 58 percent of employees of large Czech companies are now able to work from home on their own devices. This benefit was most common for employees in the Zlín Region, where 74 percent reported being able to from home. In Prague the number is not much lower, at 66 percent.

Examples of malicious activity which spiked during the Covid pandemic were spam, phishing and scraping attacks. Almost a third of employees in the Liberec Region received malicious emails recently, while in the Olomouc Region the number was 23.8 percent. Even more malicious ransomware attacks were meanwhile reported, targeting the Czech healthcare sector in attempts to capitalize on the increased operative strain during the pandemic.

Worrying data about the risky activities of Czech employees when using work devices coincides with a major drive towards the development of IT innovation as a cornerstone of the Czech economy. Cybersecurity company SentinelOne announced a major investment into the Czech Republic this month, including the establishment of a Prague research hub. And this year, the Czech Republic hosted the finals of the European Cyber Security Challenge, organized by the European Agency for Cyber Security, in Prague.

As the IT sector expands to ever new levels of economic significance in the Czech Republic, new jobs are being created and wages are being driven up. Yet it appears there is still some way to go in educating employees on the dos and don’ts of using their own work devices.