Learn more about Photolok | Click Here
Post Thumbnail

Report: Youth Won’t Save Government from Bad Cyber Hygiene

A new survey of government office workers across the world found that “digital natives” — those who grew up with modern technology — are actually more likely than older employees to exhibit bad password habits.
Government Technology, March 09, 2023 •  News Staff
For those who grew up with smartphones, technology tends to come naturally — except when it comes to password hygiene, apparently.

A new report from the cybersecurity and IT asset management company Ivanti, in which it surveyed about 800 government office workers across the world, found that younger employees were more likely to use the same or similar passwords for multiple devices or accounts. They were also more likely to share passwords between personal and work accounts.

The survey also found that those in leadership positions demonstrated worse cyber hygiene than others. They were more than four times as likely to have clicked on a phishing link and five times as likely to share passwords with people outside their organization. Leaders also take longer to change passwords and use easy-to-find information such as birthdays in their passwords, according to the report.

Other findings from the survey:

  • Respondents rated the complexity of their organizations’ tech stacks as the single biggest barrier to security excellence, followed closely by a lack of cybersecurity skills.
  • Only 61 percent of respondents worldwide said their organizations mandate cybersecurity training; in the U.S. that rises to 78 percent.
  • Half of respondents reported that their organizations were entirely or mostly in-office, with the rest engaging in some mix of remote work. The percentages were mostly consistent between the U.S. and global average.
  • Nearly half of security professionals said they lack high visibility into all users, devices, applications and services on their networks.

More Articles

Workplace Security in 2026: When AI, Insiders, and Remote Work Collide

Kasey Cromer, Netlok | January 15, 2026 Executive Summary The uncomfortable truth about workplace se[...more]

How Insider Threats Bypass Security: Why Traditional Authentication Fails in the AI Era

Kasey Cromer, Netlok | January 5, 2026 Executive Summary Insider threats now cost an average of $17.[...more]

Authentication at a Crossroads: Preparing for the AI-Powered Threat Landscape of 2026 and Beyond

Kasey Cromer, Netlok | December 4, 2025 Series Recap Part 1 (November 14, 2025) took a deeper dive i[...more]

The $40 Billion Crisis: How AI-Powered Fraud Is Overwhelming Enterprise Security Teams

Kasey Cromer, Netlok | November 21, 2025 Executive Summary Global cybercrime is now a $10.5 trillion[...more]

AI Deepfakes: Enterprise Security Crisis Demanding New Authentication

Kasey Cromer, Netlok | November 14, 2025 Executive Summary A single deepfake video call cost a multi[...more]

Your Personal Data Was Just Stolen: Here’s Your 24-Hour Response Plan

Kasey Cromer, Netlok | October 6, 2025 Executive Summary 2025 is setting new records for cyberattack[...more]

Wrench attacks average more than 1 incident per week in 2025

K. Cromer, Netlok 9/8/2025 This analysis builds on Netlok’s ongoing research into wrench attac[...more]

Measuring MFA’s Defensive Muscle in 2025

A.R. Perez, Netlok. 7/8/2025 Multi-factor authentication (MFA) was once hailed as a near-perfect shi[...more]

The Rise of Deepfakes and Synthetic IDs Challenge Biometric Login Solutions

A.R. Perez, Netlok, July 1,2025 Understanding the Threat Landscape The emergence of sophisticated de[...more]

Member – Insider GovTech

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Linkedin-in Youtube Facebook-f

©2015-2026 Netlok. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy

Terms of Service