Assessing and Improving Security Awareness and Concerns in Teleworking

Biliangyu Wu, Purdue University

Abstract

The unexpected and unprecedented global pandemic of COVID-19 has brought dramatic changes to the whole world. As a result of social distancing instituted to slow the pandemic, teleworking has become the new norm in many organizations. The prevalence of teleworking has brought not only benefits to organizations, but also security risks. Although teleworking has existed for decades and many security related issues have been studied by previous research, the researcher didn’t find any studies that have assessed organization employee’s security awareness and concerns in teleworking. Considering the vital importance of human security awareness in protecting information security, it is necessary to learn the security awareness situation in teleworking. Furthermore, employees with low security awareness should be trained to improve the awareness level. Therefore, this research intends to examine the current teleworking security awareness and concerns in organizations by conducting a survey of workers. Through the survey answers, the researcher found that the security awareness varies in groups of teleworkers who are at different ages, from different industries and different-sized organizations. Meanwhile, the researcher also found that COVID-19 pandemic does not have much impact on people’s security concern in teleworking scenarios.

Degree

M.Sc.

Advisors

Ngambeki, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Labor relations|Organizational behavior

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