The hybrid workplace is more reliant than ever on cloud-first technologies, but network blind spots are emerging.
This is according to Aric Ault, senior director: channel for Infoblox EMEA, unpacking the 2022 global state of security survey which highlights the security concerns, fears, and costs from 1 100 IT respondents in the US, Mexico, Brazil, UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Spain, United Arab Emirates, Australia and Singapore
“The explosion of employee-owned technologies on the corporate network feeds IT teams’ growing fears over losing direct security controls and network visibility. This has become all the more concerning as breach costs top $1-million for 43% of surveyed organisations.”
Ruan du Preez, vendor alliance director: SA and SADC at Exclusive Networks Africa, adds: “This is an extremely valuable report, especially as it sheds light on changes in working and e-commerce that took place world-wide as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The number of participants represents a very strong global reach and allows us here in South Africa – where we also adapted rapidly to the shift in online functionality – to extrapolate from the extremely current lessons that have been learned.
“The survey objectives were to gain greater visibility into the global state of security, including the impact that remote workers and customers have had on organisations that were forced to adapt to rapid change,” Ault notes. “Participants shed light on their top concerns, breach costs, and anticipated investments.”
Key findings from the survey include:
* The surge in remote work has permanently changed the corporate landscape with the additions of VPNs and firewalls, employee-owned devices, and cloud and on-premises DDI servers to manage data traffic across the expanded network.
* The hybrid workforce reality is causing greater concerns with data leakage, ransomware and attacks through remote access tools and cloud services.
* Fifty-three percent of respondents experienced up to five security incidents that led to at least one breach.
* Organisations are buying cloud-first security tools to protect their hybrid environments, with 40 percent of respondents planning to purchase a DNS security product over the next year.