This is a first! CrashPlan has published its own research.
In late 2024, CrashPlan surveyed more than 2,300 U.S. workers about their employers, roles, work pressures, and satisfaction levels. The result is the 2024 Work Trend Security Report. Given the compelling findings from this research, we expect we will make this an annual report.
The Work Trend Security Report showcases current workplace cultures, technology trends, and cybersecurity habits among the American laptop class (meaning, people who work primarily on their laptops and/or those who work on laptops from anywhere, at any time). It highlights the shifting tides of economic fluctuations, working conditions, and data security. Mostly, it speaks to the current workplace and how people are saving, storing, and handling their content.
Here are some of the findings:
Knowledge workers, who focused on finding information, now find themselves forced to accelerate and augment their acumen with the addition of AI. With the rise of AI, a new type of worker has emerged – the Idea Worker. The knowledge worker is evolving – they must create, invent, and ideate – and this is where the Idea Worker comes in. They’re architects, attorneys, designers, data scientists, programmers, researchers, and writers.
These Idea Workers are more engaged, but they struggle with data backup. The nature of Idea Workers’ work introduces a new kind of enterprise risk:
- The idea workers’ data is distributed.
- Idea Workers’ files are bigger, and data-related tasks are time-consuming.
- Idea Workers are using unauthorized GenAI for work.
As a result, Idea Workers find backing up their work data more difficult than other workers. Most backup solutions don’t meet their more complex data needs, creating an ever-widening backup gap within enterprises.
- 59% of organizations don’t provide Idea Workers with clear policies to ensure their data is backed up
- 55% of organizations don’t provide Idea Workers with tools to ensure their data is backed up
- Idea Workers are 78% more likely than others to spend three hours or more each day uploading, downloading and moving files and data
- Idea Workers are 46% more likely to deal with very large files (100GB or more)
- Idea Workers are 31% more likely to save work data on a personal computer or other computer that their organization didn’t issue them
- Idea Workers are 28% more likely to spend a long time waiting for file backups to complete
- Idea Workers are 19% more likely to say their employer makes backing up work data very difficult.
The data also revealed the happier employees are, the more likely they are to back-up their data — validating backup frequency as a new window into employee engagement. Nearly one in six workers has experienced a co-worker intentionally deleting important company data before quitting a job. One in twenty has personally committed “Rage Deletion,” with GenZ employees being twice as likely (one in ten) to admit to doing so.
Rage Deleters are significantly less engaged at work and more frustrated than other employees. They are more likely to feel increased pressure to show productivity at work, are more concerned about their job security, and are more than twice as likely as others to be seeking new jobs. They have received cybersecurity training less often and are less likely to feel their employer invests sufficiently in professional development.
- Concern over Rage Deletion is highest in the technology industry (21%) and among programmers and developers (25%).
- Only 43% of companies provide tools that ensure employee data is backed up and only 39% provide clear policies mandating their use.
- The most common roles that admitted to personally committing rage deletion include design engineers and designers (11%), editors and writers (9%), video producers (7%), and developers and programmers (7%).
There’s more, of course, but we want you to view the report. Who are your Idea Workers and where are they storing their data?
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