People in Europe and Canada have gone back to the hours they were working before the coronavirus shutdown.
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NordVPN analyzed log on and log off time stamps to understand how long the work day lasts in 10 countries. People in the US and the UK are still working extra hours every week.
Image: NordVPN Teams
UK workers are spending an extra two hours at work every day while people in the US are working three extra hours, according to an analysis of VPN data. NordVPN Teams found that people in both countries are still working the extra hours that started in April when coronavirus lockdowns started. People in France, Spain, and Canada have returned to their normal working hours pre-quarantine.
The company has been tracking VPN log in and log out times for workers in 10 countries to measure the impact of the remote work trend.
“The data has also revealed that the UK seems to start work an hour later than before the quarantine, but both the US and UK tend to work late. We also see that there is no significant drop in the usage of business VPNs during lunch time, which might suggest that lunch breaks have become shorter,” Juta Gurinaviciute, chief technology officer at NordVPN Teams, said in a press release.
SEE: Social engineering: A cheat sheet for business professionals (free PDF) (TechRepublic)
To combat burnout, companies are changing their vacation policies as well as company culture to encourage people to take vacation instead of hoard it.
Owen Hughes described the security impact of distracted and burned out employees who are working too many hours, including being more likely to fall for phishing scams and click on malicious links. Email security firm Tessian found that one in five companies reported that they had lost customers as a result of a misdirected email that resulted in a data breach.
TechRepublic’s Tom Merritt offered these ideas for avoiding burnout on the IT staff:
- Automate and delegate
- Always train
- Simplify the process
- Build relationships
- Preventative maintenance
Brandon Vigliarolo shared advice from the United States National Security Agency about how to secure VPNs, including:
- Reduce the attack surface of VPN gateways
- Only use cryptographic algorithms that comply with CNSSP 15
- Don’t use default VPN settings
- Remove cryptography suites that aren’t in use or are non-compliant
- Keep VPNs updated
Moira Alexander offers advice on how to make remote work permanent if your company is considering that shift.
TechRepublic’s Nadine Mendoza rounded up the top 15 companies hiring for part-time remote jobs, based on an assessment of 50,000 companies in the FlexJobs database.
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