Cyber Crime: Survey by IT security firm Check Point shows remote work brings more risk

The top three issues IT and security professionals contend with are scaling performance (46%), addressing privacy and data sovereignty concerns (42%) and supporting remote access for employees’ unmanaged devices (40%).

Cyberattacks and threats have increased as hackers have taken advantage of the shift to remote and hybrid work. A recent survey by IT security firm Check Point Software Technologies revealed how organisations have been impacted by the pandemic, particularly when it comes to IT and security strategies. It confirms that there is a growing shift towards cloud-based security and secure access service edge (SASE) solutions. As organisations enable their employees to access corporate resources remotely, the SASE model addresses the limitations of traditional network architectures, converging networking and security in the cloud.

According to 45% of all respondents, organisations are at higher risk of cyberattacks as they shift to remote working. The industries reporting the highest level of cyberattacks were finance (54%), utilities (52%) and manufacturing (47%). The top three issues IT and security professionals contend with are scaling performance (46%), addressing privacy and data sovereignty concerns (42%) and supporting remote access for employees’ unmanaged devices (40%).

To meet the hike in demand for remote working, 69% of security professionals are adding on-prem capacity; 66% are moving to cloud-based security and surprisingly, 36% do both. When enabling remote access to corporate apps, 70% consider the security of applications against cyberattacks and zero-day threats to be of high importance. Also, 94% are familiar with the secure access service edge framework, but adoption is slow, with 9% having already implemented it and 21% planning to do so.

“The shift to remote and hybrid work is one of the most important changes to have taken place as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Many organisations have had to compromise network performance and protection across their distributed environments because they use multiple different point products, which leads to management complexity and fragmented threat visibility,” said Rafi Kretchmer, vice-president of product marketing, Check Point Software.

KEY FINDINGS
45% saw uptick in cyber attacks with shift to remote work
Data exfiltration and leakage (55%), phishing emails (51%) and account takeover (44%) saw highest increase
Scaling performance (46%), ensuring privacy (42%) and supporting BYOD (40%) top administration challenges with remote access