“When my girlfriend monopolizes our laptop to watch her series, I prefer opening the office computer to watch my soccer match rather than negotiating with her,” admits Hakim, a statistician with a major insurance group.
For this thirty-year-old, as for many other employees, switching to remote work has reduced reluctance to use devices that the employer has loaned for further recreational use. In any case, this was proven by a report from Zscaler, a specialist in digital protection in the workplace.
By analyzing the data flows that pass through the professional devices of its clients, the American company finds that broadcasting or social networking applications are being consulted more and more often on smartphones or desktop computers.
We watch Netflix, Disney + and Facebook
Zscaler also specifies that it does not have access to any employees’ personal information, it only monitors normal traffic for alerting in the event of a malicious hack.
Consequently, Netflix’s use in France on professional IT tools increased by 21% between September 2020 and March 2021, moving from 51 to 61 terabytes (terabytes in French), which is the unit of measurement for data volume. As for Disney +, the streaming platform of the cinema giant, which launched in April in France, it is already one of the most used video applications.
It should also be noted that Facebook usage has increased by 50% within six months. A survey conducted by Malwarebytes in the United States last October showed that a quarter of employees consult social networks from their desktop computers.
Training video
The situation worries cybersecurity experts. “We understand that it is easier to fool vigilance into penetrating sensitive company information into configuring remote work,” explains Didier Schreiber, Zscaler South Europe Director. By walking for his personal use on insecure websites, the employee facilitates hackers’ access to his employer’s data. “
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Other applications, a priori more fun, become professional services. YouTube, for example, is by far the most viewed video platform and the volume of data used in France has increased 100% over the past six months.
“It’s complicated to train employees over the course of several weeks of remote work sessions. Companies can use video hosting sites to launch educational programs,” says Sebastian Denwall, mission manager at technology company KPMG. A good way to justify yourself to a chef if the latter criticizes you a lot to have a good time on YouTube.
