Cybersecurity Risks of Changing Workplaces: A Global Survey of Shifts in Working from Home Through the COVID-19 Pandemic

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was much speculation that a shift to more people working from home (WFH) would lead to more cybersecurity problems. Initial exploratory research surfaced differing opinions among cybersecurity experts on the actual impact of WFH, raising questions about early predictions. Given these uncertainties, we developed a global survey to empirically explore whether those shifting to work at home experienced different levels of cybersecurity problems. The COVID-19 pandemic offered an opportunity for a natural experiment in that it incentivised shifts in working patterns toward working from home. We found that participants perceived an increase in the range of cybersecurity problems experienced during the pandemic. These problems remained higher after the pandemic than they recalled in the period prior to the pandemic. However, the increase was not specifically tied to working from home per se, but to a change of workplace. This finding provides an explanation in part for why cybersecurity issues rose during the pandemic.