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The term “gig economy” refers to the increasingly common use of skilled freelance or otherwise independent workers on a short-term basis—often one project at a time. The availability of these sorts of gig workers has brought massive change to global work culture over the last few years.
Uber and Lyft drivers are prime examples. There’s no set schedule; the work is done on a ride-by-ride (gig-by-gig) basis. In the early days of the rideshare business, you were either getting into an Uber vehicle or a Lyft vehicle. But today, drivers often drive for both companies simultaneously. This is a very common aspect of the gig world—workers are often engaged by direct competitors at the same time. The ubiquitous availability of remote skillsets allows labor to be spun up or spun down as needed and workers can be hired from virtually anywhere.
In the past, an employee worked for a single company at a time—and maybe even at a single company for their entire career. There was a great deal of loyalty and longevity. But today, a contractor or a full-time employee may only stay at a company for 18 months before they move on to other opportunities. Or, even less time than that. According to a 2021 study from IBM’s Institute for Business Value, one in four workers plans to switch jobs this year, an increased pace vs. even a year ago, which was one in five. Of last year’s job switchers, more than half identified as millennial or Gen Z.
Within the technology industry in particular, however, short-term workers present some acute risks to employers—some of which are quite serious. While the business advantages might be clear, high degrees of temporality and transience make the gig economy a huge bomb for security. But no one seems to hear it ticking yet.
| How big is the gig economy? -More than one-third of US workers (36%) currently participate in the gig economy, either through primary or secondary jobs -More than half (52%) of global workers participating in the gig economy lost their jobs because of COVID-19 -More than 90% of US workers said they would consider freelancing or independent contracting work—and a lot of times this in addition to their full-time job -The gig workforce is growing 3x faster than the traditional workforce Source: Foundly.com |
Demand drives opportunities—and vulnerabilities
When it comes to the risks that gig hiring can present, there is a great cautionary tale from just a few years ago. “Bob” was a programmer who was outsourcing his coding to China—pulling down a six-figure income while paying about one-fifth of that to Chinese gig workers. Bob spent his days shopping on eBay and watching cat videos while taking credit for top-quality code and high productivity—until his scam was discovered. They found out that he had also sent his security token to the gig workers to circumvent his company’s two-factor authentication! The details make for a memorable story—but the security and intellectual property (IP) implications of this very situation could be quite damaging for the company deploying that code.
Business digitalization is driving the demand for gig workers. Companies are moving faster than ever. The adoption of cloud technologies allows them to be increasingly versatile and agile. And that means that the attack surface is also changing. The gig worker part of digitalization means that the nature of the insider threat has also evolved.
Insider threats have always been an issue in the security industry. Some of the biggest cases of data loss and fraud that I’ve come across in my career come from insiders because they know the company’s controls and processes and can find ways around them, easily avoiding detection. But the potential risks associated with gig workers are unique from those of common insiders—making threats even harder to detect and defend against.
A new flavor of insider threat
The rapid churn of many gig projects means that background checks are often overlooked. Because the jobs are short-term, workers are also often not required to have the same security safeguards in place that companies would expect of a contract worker—such as using encrypted hard drives, antivirus protection, and/or secure document repositories.
Gig workers typically use their own computers for jobs, storing sensitive research and proprietary information on a local drive or in a personal cloud account. But what happens to all that information once the job is over? Does it get deleted or is stored and vulnerable to theft? Does it get shared or reused with a competitor?