More than a third of senior executives believe that younger employees are the “main culprits” for data security breaches in the workplace according to a new independent study into attitudes of the next generation workforce about cybersecurity, commissioned by Centrify, a leading provider of Zero Trust Security through the power of Next-Gen Access. More worrying is that the study also reveals that these same decision makers are doing very little to allay their own fears, with over a third of 18-24-year olds able to access any files on their company network and only one in five having to request permission to access specific files. Less than half (43%) have access only to the files that are relevant to their work.

The study, conducted by Censuswide, sought the views of 1,000 next generation workers (18-24 year olds) and 500 decision makers in UK organisations to discover how security, privacy and online behaviour at work impacts the lives of younger employees and the companies that they work for. While password sharing tops the list at 56 per cent as to what keeps decision makers awake at night, 29 per cent of younger workers reveal that they are in the driving seat when it comes to password changes with their employers leaving it to them to decide when they need a password change. Furthermore 15 per cent of them admit to freely sharing passwords with colleagues.