While only one in three employees of small businesses are aware of security requirements for personal devices, three in five employees (57 per cent) have not been not given secure corporate devices from their companies, a recent report has revealed.

According to a study by cybersecurity firm Kaspersky, this is critical as most of them are dealing with sensitive business data at home in the challenging COVID-19 lockdown times.

"Although small businesses are less inclined to provide their staff with company devices to work from home, only one third of employees (34 per cent) have received instructions on how to securely work on personal laptops, tablets and smartphones while at home during the pandemic lockdown," the data showed.

While it may be the only option for some organisations to keep their business going, only one third of small business staff (34 per cent) opined that they were given any IT security requirements to work securely on personal devices.

"Small companies may be in difficult circumstances and their first priority is to save their business and employees during the lockdown. However, implementing even basic IT security requirements can decrease the chances of malware infection, compromised payments or lost business data," said Andrey Dankevich, Senior Product Marketing Manager, B2B Product Marketing at Kaspersky.