A study has found that many workers are content with the functionality of IT systems available at work, although this does not stop many transferring data via FTP or USB drive so that they can work at home.
The new report, published by 360° IT, found that 90 per cent of employees are convinced that the current standard of their IT at work is more than adequate and certainly helps to improve the levels of productivity.
The respondents were asked about what type of IT products they would ideally like to see in their place of work and 72 per cent said that they were simply looking for an IT infrastructure which worked smoothly and was easy to use. A third were looking for collaboration tools and under a tenth sought cutting edge devices which would allow them to impress clients and co-workers.
A little over half of all respondents said that they would like to work with alternatives to desktop computers in the future, with most picking laptops, a smaller percentage picking smartphones and one per cent choosing iPads as their ideal working platform.
360° IT’s Denise Plumpton said that employees wanted the powerful hardware of a laptop, along with its convenient portability more than smartphones, which are typically less well equipped and versatile because of their restricted size.
Respondents were asked whether or not they breached company policy relating to data security and 56 per cent claimed that they never stepped out of line in this respect. Twenty-seven per cent said that they harnessed webmail accounts or FPT transfers, to make files available for home working, while a quarter said that they regularly transfer files to and from their place of work on a USB storage device.
Plumpton pointed out that a tiny proportion of those questioned claimed that there were absolutely no internal rules relating to data handling and loss prevention, although she was sceptical about whether or not those who claimed to abide by their rules were actually being honest.
Plumpton said that businesses would need to look hard at their data protection policies and check whether employees were sticking to them or circumventing them to make their lives easier, without realising the associated risks of data loss or theft.
