Speaking at the ISSE Conference in Brussels, 23rd October 2012, Wilson shared results of a survey where 10-12-year-olds were questioned about their online behavior. Significantly, revealed Wilson, “all children admit to treating their online security different to their real-world security”.
The shocking statistics of the survey were published by Infosecurity in February 2012.
Wilson considers smartphones and gaming to blame for the increasing time spent by teenagers online. “Online chat, chat roulette and sexting are all a major problem. On chat roulette, a fifth of the people that appear are adult males and naked”, he said. “Teenagers are often more technically savvy than their parents – they know how to use a proxy server to get around the VPN”.
Many of the behaviours adopted by children and teenagers “will develop into young adult behaviour, meaning that organisations that employ young adults will be prone to security issues and data leaks”, Wilson warned. Evolved behaviours, he said, could include the following:
- Difficulty separating work/private use of social networking
- Ill-judged personal comments causing reputation damage
- Uploading embarrassing pictures from the staff Christmas party
- Disregard of the company acceptable use policy.
Consequences of the aforementioned behaviours may include, but not be exclusive to: affected attendance and functionality, inappropriate use of company systems, malware threats, and use of social networking at work that could lead to data loss, defamation or liability.
“Behaviour and morals of youngsters will filter through the work environment”, Wilson reaffirmed. He suggested that damage limitation could be done via implementing a disciplinary and investigation process and a data protection policy. Inductions should include security briefings and the infosecurity policy should cover “working at home, malware at home, email acceptable use policy and mobile working policy”.
Wilson concluded by suggesting that by educating parents in the workforce about online dangers, the lessons will filter down to their children, thus educating the workforce of the future.