Keep your work and personal online lives apart

The latest Cyber Insights report from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) shows that phishing and credential harvesting continues to be the incident most reported by businesses.  

Blurred lines

The report highlights why it’s important to keep work and personal online activity apart. 
When staff use a business email address or password on personal websites – such as social media or file-sharing platforms, those details are then at risk of being exposed to cyber criminals if any of the websites are breached.

Attackers could get access to work accounts and systems which could lead to:  

• business email compromise
• phishing attacks
• ransomware
• theft of sensitive or confidential data.

This risk compounds over time.  

The report tells the story of a single New Zealand business email address that appeared repeatedly in public data breaches over 16 years, starting with a breach at MySpace, and went on to appear in breaches affecting 12 other websites, including LinkedIn and Twitter.

Chasing shadows

The same behaviour that exposes business credentials outside of work can also happen internally and is called “shadow IT”.  

It commonly includes:

• forwarding work emails to a personal account
• storing business documents in a private cloud account
• using unapproved software-as-a-service  
• logging into work systems with a personal account.

Most people don’t do this with bad intentions but the impact on your business can be serious – increasing the risk of data leaks, privacy breaches and even legal consequences.

Small and medium businesses often have fast-moving teams, lean IT support, and a reliance on cloud services and third-party suppliers — which makes clear boundaries even more important.

Read the Quarter 4 2025 Cyber Insights report(external link)

Read the case study: Once more unto the breach(external link)

Read the article: Chasing shadows: managing unsanctioned IT (external link)