Millennials (or Generation Y) are those who were born from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. A study now looked at the impact which generational attitudes have toward security issues and compared Millennials Generation X/Gen X (those born between 1965 and 1980) and the “baby boomers” (born between 1946 and 1964).

You would normally think that the Millennials know what they are doing when it comes to technology, considering that most of them grew up with it. But while it is a big plus when it comes to handling devices and navigating around the net, the sense of well-being also seems to be their Achilles heel and leads them to being more careless with privacy concerns and a few other security aspects. The study backs this up with some key findings:

• “Millennials have the worst password reuse habits of all demographics: 85 percent admit to re-using credentials across sites and services.
• Risky behavior can be found across demographics: 16 percent of millennials and 14 percent of Gen-Xers accept social media invites from strangers “most of the time.”
• Millennials are most likely to find security workarounds: A combined 56 percent admit they would “very” or “moderately likely” evade restrictive workplace controls. “

On the other hand, the paper also shows that the other included generations show risky behavior as well (though not in the same areas: Baby Boomers for example may pose a rather big BYOD risk; 48% use personal devices to access work related content).

Nonetheless it would seem that Millennials are easy prey for hackers: Reusing passwords and being too trusting on social media (which may or may not lead you to fall victim to social engineering) can lead to unwelcome results.

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