Work From Home May Mean Working From Personal Devices; Don't Forget Backup And Security

By Kyle Fiehler, Carbonite

Nestled within Webroot’s chapter on malware in its 2020 threat report is a comparison of infection rates between business and personal devices. The finding that personal devices are about twice as likely as business devices to become infected was always significant, if not surprising.

But the advent of the novel coronavirus—a development that that followed the publication of the report—has greatly increased the importance of that stat.

According to a joint study by MIT, Stanford, and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), more than a third (34%) of Americans transitioned to working from home as a result of COVID-19. They join approximately 14.6% of workers already working from home to bring the total to nearly half the entire American workforce.

During remote work many employees are forced or simply able to use personal devices for business-related activities. This presents unique security concerns according to Webroot threat analyst Tyler Moffitt.