Remote working increases security threats, report
Ninety-nine percent of organizations with over 2,000 employees have experienced a security attack in the last 12 months. In 44 percent of cases, this was due to remote, hybrid, or roaming workers, according to research commissioned by Xalient.
Organizations are having a hard time keeping up with the ever-changing threat landscape. Nine out of ten organizations surveyed admitted that new cybersecurity threats are taking advantage of gaps in their network, and 45 percent agree that they struggle to enforce policies and deliver a consistent performance because they must lock down so much of their network: not very effective or efficient. Therefore, many respondents opted for a SASE solution to improve their security and overcome performance issues.
According to respondents, further drivers for SASE adoption are addressing performance issues with business-critical SaaS apps (15%), securing remote access for the hybrid/remote workforce (14%), and addressing the rising cost of traditional network architecture (13%).
The benefits of SASE were many, with cited benefits ranging from enabling secure remote access for the hybrid and remote workforce, to secure cloud adoption and migration. However, the top benefit experienced by 30 percent of organizations, was improved performance of business-critical SaaS apps. This was followed by updated threat protection without hardware and software upgrades (28%) and the third most common benefit was improved security surrounding breaches with consistent policies (27%).
The research highlighted mixed assumptions about single-vendor vs multi-vendor SASE solutions, with misalignment between the benefits organizations think they will derive from each SASE model.
While benefits of single-vendor SASE solutions included a more predictable return on investment (ROI) owing to fewer point solutions (30%), greater economies of scale (25%), and tightly integrated components (25%), challenges with this approach included obtaining the control they need (26%), flexibility to introduce different vendors on a best-of-breed basis (26%) and these not being as effective, and vendor lock-in (24%).
Likewise, with multi-vendor SASE solutions, while respondents perceived the controls to be better (25%), with more flexibility and enhanced security (27%), there were concerns around pricing which isn’t always clear (22%), with many admitting they would need a partner to help them manage multi-vendor SASE solutions (28%).
Regardless of the approach, SASE adoption will continue to grow as organizations look for ways to close the security gaps that new and evolving threats present to the network – and make the network more resilient and performant to deliver a better user experience.
About the report
The research was conducted by Opinion Matters, which surveyed 700 IT, network, and security leaders from organizations with over 2,000 employees in the UK, the US, Canada, and the Benelux.