There’s a new benefit employers may want to consider offering in 2023 – privacy protection.
The reason: Eighty-two percent of breaches have a human element involved, according to Verizon’s 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report.
Keeping employees’ privacy safe, means keeping the company’s privacy safe.
Dimitri Shelest, founder and CEO at OneRep, a privacy protection company, believes the reason privacy is a top priority for 2023 is the rapid transition from an in-office workforce to a remote workforce created a ton of privacy and security challenges. This in turn opened companies up to security threats.
Think about this, more than one-third of adult Americans say they’re online almost constantly, according to a Pew Research study. That’s a lot of time online. And while employees may think their sharing of personal information in posts is innocent, Shelest said the posts contain bits of data that “threat actors” – people who are key drivers of or participants in malicious action targeting a company’s IT security – can use to implement a scam or fraud.
And that’s just one piece of the cyber security puzzle.
In a digital-first environment, more and more employers are waking up and making privacy solutions part of their benefits package for the protection of their employees and their companies.
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And while employees are extremely worried about their online privacy, very few do anything to protect themselves.
“Privacy protection solutions give people more control over their personal information, empowering them to regain their privacy online,” Shelest wrote in Forbes. “At a time when employees are leaving their jobs at a historic rate, privacy protection benefits can be a key differentiator, allowing companies to attract and retain top talent.”
Is this an expense? Of course, it is.
But an employer’s ROI can probably be recouped by avoiding one security scam/breach. And threat actors on a daily basis send billions of phishing emails – a scary thought. So, companies that are helping their employees keep their personal information protected are boosting their own cyber-security at the same time.