More people are watching porn on work devices — and it's a cybersecurity problem for employers

• As working from home becomes the norm, people's work habits are changing rapidly and becoming increasingly blurred with their personal life, according to a new report from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky.
• One of the report's findings: People are now more likely to watch porn on a device that they also use for work.
• Porn sites, which typically host media-rich pages and lots of pop-up ads, are a significant source of malware, and past breaches of porn sites have been used to blackmail people.
• While porn sites aren't all necessarily hotbeds for hackers, the report shows how shifts in people's browsing habits raise unexpected cybersecurity challenges for employers.
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Watching porn at the office used to be off-limits. But what happens when your living room becomes your new office?

Millions of people's personal and professional habits have shifted dramatically amid the COVID-19 outbreak, according to a sweeping new study from cybersecurity firm Kaspersky. Among other findings, the study revealed that people working from home are increasingly likely to look at porn on the same devices they use for their jobs — and cybersecurity experts warn that's not safe for work.

Kaspersky surveyed over 6,000 people working from home across the globe about their online habits in April. Among respondents who reported watching adult content, 51% admitted to doing so on the same device that they use for work. Nearly 20% said they used a device provided by their employer to watch porn.

The trend raises red flags for employers aiming to protect their information. The shift to remote work is already a cybersecurity landmine that has increased the number of potential targets for hackers looking to infiltrate a company, and porn sites — which host media-rich pages and lots of pop-up ads — are notorious for transmitting malware.

There's also a history of hackers using people's porn browsing history as a weapon against them. A 2017 blackmail scam targeted people's work emails with "we know what you watched" messages in order to extort them. Two years earlier, hackers used information from an Ashley Madison data breach for blackmail.

Porn sites aren't necessarily the riskiest domains — malicious ads are just as likely to appear on e-commerce or media sites, according to a Cisco security report. But Kaspersky's findings illustrate the broader rise in overlap between people's personal browsing and their work.

Andrey Evdokimov, Kaspersky's Chief Information Security Officer, recommends that companies put forward clear standards for sites, apps, and messaging services that employees are allowed to use on work devices.

"It is necessary to find a balance between user convenience, business necessity and security. To achieve this, a company should provide access to services based on the principle of only supplying minimal, necessary privileges," Evdokimov said in a statement to Business Insider.

If you're working from home, here are the basic steps that experts recommend to keep your devices secure.