New research suggests that nearly 90% of enterprises in the US will increase the adoption of a remote working workforce
The latest report from Pulse Secure says 84% of organizations expect a spike in remote working adoption even after the COVID-19 pandemic. The acceleration in work-from-home adoption will be on the rise despite significant security concerns.
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The report ‘2020 Remote Work From Home Cybersecurity’ revealed 63% of organizations had up to 25% of employees working remotely before the crisis, but now more than 75% of their workforce is working from home. One-third of the companies were not sufficiently prepared for such a rapid shift from on-premises to remote work. The report notes that nearly 55% of enterprises successfully expanded the capacity to fully support a remote workforce in a week’s time.
Around 80% of companies said they had adequate remote working security preparations, while 69% said they are still concerned about security risks by users working from home. Nearly 60% of respondents cited awareness and training has the biggest security challenge. Home WiFi network security, personal computing devices, and lack of visibility are some of the major concerns of organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a significant rise in phishing and malware attacks. According to the report, 72% of enterprises are the most concerning malware, while 67% of them are worried about phishing. Unauthorized user access and unpatched system vulnerability are other primary concerns for organizations.
Sixty-five percent of surveyed companies allow remote employees to access work data from personal, unmanaged devices, but 46% said that practice brings a high-security risk. Anti-virus, firewalls, a virtual private network (VPN), and multi-factor authentication (MFA) (66%) are the top security controls companies have deployed to secure remote work. Nearly 80% of respondents said they are employing the same level of security controls and data management for all roles in the company as they access remotely.
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The majority of respondents said they believe WFH is here to stay, and 33% of companies already said they are considering making a few positions permanently remote after the pandemic ends. Fifty-five percent of businesses expect budgets for remote workforce security to increase by 2021. Top tech companies, including Twitter, Square, and Box, have already announced they will let employees work from home till at least 2021. Meanwhile, there are several others, including Barclays that plan to talk about permanently shifting to work from home and reduce office spaces. But that’s a discussion to be taken up after maybe a couple of months.
Sneha Bokil is a Senior Editor with OnDot Media. She writes editorials on an array of topics ranging from IoT, AI, ML, and cloud computing, among others. She has over 9 years of experience in the field of content creation, where she has written on technology, both enterprise and consumer, and finance.
