The number of applications that employees use on a regular basis continues to increase and a lot of these apps have various alerts. We get a “ping” when an email arrives, a comment is added in Teams or when someone tries to contact us in WhatsApp. Then when Windows needs an update, the antivirus hasn’t done a scan or if a problem occurs on the computer another ping or notification pops up.
All these pings, noises and notifications can lead to App fatigue being a very real thing and it is becoming a cybersecurity problem. The more that users get overwhelmed by notifications, the more likely they are to ignore them. Just think about the various digital alerts that you get:
- Various software applications on your computer
- Web-based SaaS tools
- Websites where you have allowed alerts
- Mobile apps and tools
- Emails
- SMS’s
- Text messages
- MS Teams
- Yammer
- Slack
- Messenger
To make things even worse some employees are getting the same notification on two or more devices, which just adds to the problem. This can lead to many issues that impact productivity and cybersecurity. Besides alert bombardment, every time you start to use a new app, which means a new password that adds to the problem.
How Does App Fatigue Put Companies at Risk?
Employees Ignore Updates
When digital alerts interrupt your work, you can feel like you are always behind. This leads to ignoring notifications that don’t seem to be time sensitive, ie tasks like clicking to install an update. As employees become overwhelmed with too many alerts they tend to ignore them. When updates come up, they may quickly click them away as they feel they can’t spare the time right now and aren’t sure how long it will take.
Ignoring app updates on devices is dangerous as many of those updates include important security patches for found vulnerabilities. When they are not installed, the device and its network are at a higher risk and thus becomes a security issue.
Password Reuse
Another security casualty of app fatigue are passwords. The more accounts someone must log into, the more likely they are to reuse passwords. It is estimated that passwords are typically reused 64% of the time.
Credential breach is a key driver of cloud data breaches. Hackers can easily crack weak passwords and if passwords are reused multiple accounts are compromised in one simple hack.
Employees Turn Off or Ignore Alerts
Some alerts are okay to turn off, but turning off important security alerts is not a good thing. There comes a time when one more notification can push someone over the edge. They may turn off all the alerts they can across all apps. The problem with this is that in the mix of alerts are important ones, such as an anti-malware program warning about a newly found virus – this is something you don’t want to happen.
What is the Answer to App Fatigue?
In todays world, it is not realistic to just delete all your apps and stop all notifications. You can though, put a strategy in place to put people in charge of their tech, and not the other way around. Here are some good strategies:
Streamline Your Business Applications
From both a security and productivity view, the fewer apps you use the better you are and the less risk you have. Along with fewer passwords and less notifications. Take a moment to evaluate the tools you use to see where redundancies may be and where you can consolidate.
Consider moving to a fully featured platform like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. These platforms include loads of tools and addons, but users only need a single login to access them.
Review Your Notification Settings.
Check out your notifications and only turn on those that are the most important. This will ensure that you are not bombarded with notifications from all sort of apps.
Automate Updates
A cybersecurity best practice is to automate device and software updates. This takes the process out of your employees’ hands and enhances productivity by removing unnecessary updates from their view. It also mitigates the chance there will be a vulnerable app putting your network at risk.
Inform Staff about What Alerts are Important
Employees may be afraid to turn off notifications and owners / managers may not even realise that constant alerts are hurting productivity. Communicate with employees and let them know they can talk with you to discuss how to use and manage alerts more effectively.
Need Help Taming Your Cloud App Environment?
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