Just Can't Stop Clicking That Link

Federal employees, like workers in the private sector, do some risky things on their work computers. That's what the Government Business Council, a Nextgov sister business unit at Government Executive Media Group, found when it conducted a survey of government workers' cybersecurity practices.

Federal managers, like most workers in the private sector, do some risky things on their computers. That's what the Government Business Council, a Nextgov sister business unit at Government Executive Media Group, found when it conducted a survey of government workers' cybersecurity practices.

Here's one of the questions:

Do you follow links in e-mails from unfamiliar people or organizations?

The breakdown:

cyber 4.bmp

The good news is that more than half never follow links from unidentified senders. Add in the 17 percent who do so less often than several times a year, and you begin to approach three-quarters of the government workforce. But it goes downhill from there.

Nearly 30 percent of federal managers GBC surveyed (244 people) said they follow links from unidentified sources at least once a month. That sound you hear is your chief information security officer falling of her chair.

More findings from the survey later this week.