COVID-19 and Beyond: Employee Perceptions of the Efficiency of Teleworking and Its Cybersecurity Implications

Abstract

The main idea of this research is to examine how teleworking has affected employee perceptions of organizational efficiency and cybersecurity before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research is based on an analytical and empirical approach. The starting point of the research is a critical and comprehensive analysis of the relevant literature regarding the efficiency of organizations due to teleworking, digital information security, and cyber risk management. The quantitative approach is based on designing a structural equation model (SEM) on a sample of 1101 respondents from the category of employees in Montenegro. Within the model, we examine simultaneously the impact of their perceptions on the risks of teleworking, changes in cyber-attacks during teleworking, organizations’ capacity to respond to cyber-attacks, key challenges in achieving an adequate response to cyber-attacks, as well as perceptions of key challenges related to cybersecurity. The empirical aspects of our study involve constructing latent variables that correspond to different elements of employee perception; namely, their perception of organizational efficiency and the extent to which the digital information security of their organizations has been threatened during teleworking during the pandemic.

COVID-19 and the New Normal of Organizations and Employees: An Overview

“…Cybersecurity is another primary concern for organizations that aim to digitize their operations further. The lack of well-planned and well-resourced telework programs have exposed organizations to cyber threats during the pandemic, which is expected to increase in the future [81]. Research, however, suggests that cross-sectoral collaboration can help organizations overcome their capacity and skills gaps [82,83].…”

“…The deployment of adequate technological infrastructure and resource support will be key in enabling wider adoption of digital tools as part of work in the new normal [24,84]. Going forward, the role of cybersecurity as "an essential sustainable economic development factor" will continue to evolve and affect how organizations adopt and absorb digital solutions as part of their processes [81] (p. 4).…”

“…A lack of adequate training and resources will be a key problem for organizations that are financially weak and are faced with developmental and contextual barriers [119,120]. Another key implication of the digital divide is the lack of capacity to avert cyber threats, which will be further exacerbated by the lack of technical capacity, the failure to meet minimum safety standards, poorly configured home ICT devices, a lack of education, and gaps in employee digital literacy [81].…”

Challenges of Managing Information Security during the Pandemic

“…The International Organization for Standardization [21] specifies that all types of work done outside the office, including from home, are collectively referred to as teleworking. The importance of ensuring security requirements for teleworking to guard the sensitive information accessed and passed over the communication links has been discussed by many studies [11,[22][23][24]. One of the most outstanding issues with teleworking is ensuring information security is regarding employees not using a VPN.…”

Using Neural Networks in Order to Analyze Telework Adaptability across the European Union Countries: A Case Study of the Most Relevant Scenarios to Occur in Romania

“…Although emergency actions, which were put into operation in order to avoid SARS-CoV-2 proliferation among employees, were able to bring about a long-expected shift in terms of the settling down of "working-from-home practices", a set of drivers responsible for the degree of telework adoption were mentioned both by the pre-and post-pandemic literature [3,4,8,16,20,30,54]. While there is a consensus in relation to the main determinants that impact the relationship between telework and organizational performance-such as the adjustability of work arangements; employee degree of self determination in conducting their work tasks; incresed protection against ilnesses; the diminishing trend of the operational costs of enterprises; the employment of appropriate communication tools; efficient organization of business operations, etc.-the assessement of their consequences and importance varies to a large extent from one author to another [55,56].…”