Survey of Remote Worker Habits

Survey Shows Employees Rate Productivity High, Security and Clothing Low When Working From Home

SonicWALL Survey Shows Greater Freedom Among Out-of-Office Worker Community Keeps Dishes and Workload Up-to-Date, Bad Temper at Bay

SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SonicWALL Inc. (NASDAQ: SNWL), a leading provider of integrated network security and productivity solutions, today announced the results of a survey of 941 remote and mobile workers worldwide. The survey, conducted by Insight Express and SonicWALL at the end of 2005, indicates that the growing trend towards home working is likely to breed a more productive and liberated international workforce.

76% of employees surveyed believe that working remotely is an aid to productivity and 61% are also convinced that their managers agree with them. Security came low on the list of priorities, however, with 88% of the individuals surveyed admitting to storing passwords in easily-discovered locations, and only 12% employing encrypted files to store and manage their login data. 56% said they rely on their memories to keep track of their network passwords, while others used the same passwords for all devices, stored the information on cell phones, or stuck notes with the login information onto their computer (4%).

Yin and Yang of clothes, chores and cleanliness

All respondents were relaxed about their personal habits when working remotely. While about 39% of respondents of both sexes said they wear sweats while working from home, 12% of males and 7% of females wear nothing at all. In matters of cleanliness, the difference between the sexes was more pointed: 44% of women surveyed said they showered on work-at-home days, as opposed to men, who were slightly more likely to shave (33%) than wash (30%). 18% of men regularly break off to do household tasks such as laundry, dishwashing or dusting whereas many more women -- over 38% -- found their attention claimed by chores.

Respondents also said they took the opportunity to eat and drink outside standard times (about 35%); listen to music (45%) or watch TV (28%); and 21% of all respondents admitted to sneaking in an afternoon nap. A small percentage of those surveyed (9%) admitted to feelings of guilt about being away from the office. Taking a longer lunch than at the workplace was also relatively rare (12%).

This easy-going approach keeps tempers on an even keel, according to the survey. More than 80% of surveyed workers have never lost their temper with support staff trying to help then fix a problem. Only 40% of polled respondents said they experienced problems when accessing their corporate networks remotely, although fewer than 50% accessed any applications other than Web mail when working outside the office.

More than half of the survey's respondents accessed the corporate network from home on a daily basis, with 86% logging in remotely several times a week. Respondents said that the chief attraction of working remotely was the ability to maintain a flexible schedule. Only 22% of workers used cell phones or PDAs to work from home, but respondents said they expected this type of usage to grow in the coming year.

"We are experiencing a sharp rise in demand for simple, secure remote access to networks of all sizes," said Steve Franzese, vice president of marketing at SonicWALL. "The growing popularity of remote and mobile working means that the perimeter of the network has become indistinct, and is therefore more difficult to protect. With our new SSL VPN appliance range, SonicWALL offers organizations of all sizes a very simple, powerful way of keeping remote workers connected and protected."

In 2005, SonicWALL launched the industry's first range of SSL-VPN solutions for remote network access supporting unlimited numbers of concurrent tunnels at no additional cost. The powerful family of appliances makes remote clientless access simple and affordable. These solutions will interoperate seamlessly behind third party firewalls and deliver enhanced Unified Threat Management protection to remote users who access a SonicWALL-protected network. In November, 2005 SonicWALL acquired the technology assets of startup enKoo in order to enrich the feature set of its SSL-VPN offering. In January, 2006 the company introduced the SSL-VPN 200 appliance for networks of under 50 users.

650 responses to the survey came from the United States, with the remainder from Australia, Canada, Asia Pacific, Japan and Europe. The majority of respondents were in the 25 to 45 age range.