More than half of financial services professionals (56 per cent) admit to neglecting safe data practices when working from home, according to new data.

A global survey of over 300 professionals in accountancy, banking and finance conducted by regulatory technology firm Tessian found that 61 per cent said they felt they could ‘get away with’ more risky behaviour around data protections when working remotely, highlighting the increased risk of a breach during the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to the research the top reason for cutting security corners when working from home was because they feel they weren’t being watched by IT teams (33 per cent), closely followed by the fact they weren’t working from their usual devices (31 per cent).

While several financial services institutions have rolled out measures to protect against unsafe data practices, almost two thirds of workers in the financial services sector (64 per cent) said they would be able to find a workaround if security solutions or company policies prevent them from getting their job done.

A further 68 per cent said that their company’s security solutions impeded their productivity.

More than two fifths (43 per cent) of UK employees said they sent company data from work to their personal email accounts one or more times a month, compared to almost 91 per cent in the US.

In addition, 47 per cent of finance workers said they take their company data with them when they leave an organisation.

Tim Sadler, chief executive at Tessian, commented: “The disruption caused by COVID-19 has made data loss prevention for financial firms even more challenging as the majority of employees admit to riskier cyber security practices when working remotely.

"But failure to address the problem, and your valuable company, customer and employee data could be exposed and your business faces significant reputational and financial damage.”

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