Brits risk work security by accessing pirated content

Whilst the research, conducted by OnePulse for RiskIQ, found that 80% of individuals in the UK who access pirated content on these devices do consider the personal security risks of doing so, such as a malware infection, 40% do not consider the security implications for their organisation when accessing this content.

From the piracy sites studied by RiskIQ, 33% had at least one malware incident within the 4-week period studied, whilst 20 of the piracy sites exposed 75% of visitors to malware. Of the malware found, 45% was drive by downloads, where the visitor to the site does not need to click on anything after arriving on the page, infecting users silently and often going completely undetected. The remaining 55% of malware lured users with prompts to download flash or anti-virus updates.

The most popular reasons given for downloading or streaming pirate content are because it is free (23%), it is available before paid (13%), the belief that all content should be free (12%) and that the content people are trying to access is not available any other way in the region (10%).

Ben Harknett, VP EMEA at RiskIQ said RiskIQ undertook a study of piracy sites for the Digital Citizens Alliance which revealed that individuals who stream or download pirated content online are 28 times more likely to get malware than those who use legitimate services to obtain content. For corporate security this is a 28 times higher risk of malware making its way into the corporate network from employees own devices.