IT security employees spend six hours of working week on hobbies: Kaspersky

IT security employees spend six hours of working week on hobbies: Kaspersky: As much as 85% of IT Security staff engage in leisure activities during working hours. Typically, these hobbies account for six hours[1] a week, which is an hour more than staff across the company overall. A reason for these breaks may be to find a distraction from high workloads, which was also cited as the most common reason to leave a cybersecurity job. These are findings extracted from a new Kaspersky report titled ‘Managing your IT security team’.

 

Cybersecurity can involve routine and repetitive tasks, which affects both productivity and motivation to work. A shift to remote work has further blurred the lines between working and personal time. This combination of factors can lead to situations where employees are often distracted from work.

Kaspersky’s report surveyed more than 5,200 IT and cybersecurity practitioners globally. According to the research, among the most common activities IT security staff participated in at work included reading the news (42%), watching videos on YouTube (37%), and watching films or TV series (34%). A third of the respondents managed to do physical exercise (31%) and read professional literature (33%).

 

Additionally, almost half (46%) of IT security employees believe that their colleagues left a job because of these high workloads, while 41% of employees across all departments shared this opinion. This may seem contradictory, with so much working time being spent on leisure activities, but 48% actually explained their distractions from work were due to a need for a break between tasks, rather than because of boredom or a lack of work. In addition, when working from home, some duties and meetings may now be scheduled outside the standard 9-5 workday. During longer workdays it is even more important that workers take breaks, so they are able to remain productive over this extended period....Read More