2020 Remote Workforce Cybersecurity Report Shows How Organizations Are Increasing
Investments to Secure Remote Work at Scale
Dubai, UAE., August 25, 2020
News Summary
Fortinet® (NASDAQ: FTNT), a global leader in broad, integrated, and automated
cybersecurity solutions, today unveiled the 2020 Remote Workforce Cybersecurity
Report.
The report investigates the cybersecurity challenges that organizations faced as
a result of the dramatic shift to telework early this year and the planned
investments to secure remote work in 2020 and beyond.
This report is based on a survey conducted in June 2020. Participants are
employed in 17 different countries, representing nearly all industries and the
public sector.
For a detailed view of the report, as well as some important takeaways, read the
blog. Highlights of the report follow.
“The COVID-19 pandemic will have lasting effects on how organizations invest in
cybersecurity. In fact, over 90% of enterprises plan to invest more to secure telework
over the next two years. Given a dramatically expanded digital attack surface, the waves
of cyber threats targeting remote workers, and the ongoing cyber skills gap,
organizations need to carefully consider what technologies and approaches are needed
to secure their telework strategies long-term,” said John Maddison, EVP of Products
and CMO at Fortinet. “They have an opportunity to maximize their investments with
cybersecurity platforms designed to provide comprehensive visibility and protection
across the entire digital infrastructure, including networked, application, multi-cloud, and
mobile environments. This ongoing shift to remote work will also require more than just
technology; cybersecurity training and awareness should also remain key priorities.”
The Sudden Shift to Telework Was Challenging for Most Organizations
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread rapidly in the first half of 2020, many
organizations were required to shift to telework practically overnight as teams
around the globe were asked to stay home. Nearly two-thirds of the firms
surveyed had to rapidly transition over half of their workforce to telework. In
addition, most respondents said the rapid change presented a challenge to their
organization, with 83% citing it as moderately, very, or extremely challenging.
Only 3% were not at all challenged.
In addition, the evolving remote work environment, increased reliance on
personal device usage, and overall influx of workers outside the corporate
network opened an opportunity for unprecedented cyber threat activity. From
opportunistic phishers to scheming nation-state actors, cyber adversaries found
multiple ways to exploit the global pandemic for their benefit at enormous scale
as evidenced by a recent FortiGuard Labs Global Threat Landscape Report.
Threats included phishing and business email compromise schemes, nation-
state backed campaigns, and ransomware attacks. In fact, 60% of organizations
revealed an increase in cybersecurity breach attempts during the transition to
remote work, while 34% reported actual breaches in their networks.
With a spike in employees remotely connecting to the corporate network, an
increase in breach attempts and overall cyber attacks, organizations cited the
most challenging aspects of this transition as ensuring secure connections,
business continuity, and access to business-critical applications.
At the time of the survey enterprises had already invested in key technologies as
a result of the pandemic. Nearly half of organizations invested further in VPN and
cloud security, while nearly 40% invested further in skilled IT professionals or
network access control (NAC).
There is Still Room for Improvement: Almost All Enterprises Will Invest More in
Secure Telework
Given the number of attempted breaches and overall waves of cyber threats targeting
remote workers, organizations need to carefully consider what technologies and
approaches are needed to secure telework moving forward. Defense strategies need to
be adjusted to fully account for the extension of the network perimeter into the home.
As of June this year, a long-term shift to telework is anticipated, with nearly 30%
of organizations expecting more than half of their employees to continue working
remotely full time after the pandemic.
Almost all organizations expect to invest more to secure telework long-term, with
nearly 60% of enterprises spending more than $250,000 in secure telework
investments in the next 24 months.
Moving forward, the majority of enterprises surveyed intend to make unplanned
upgrades to their existing systems to secure telework. Many also plan to add new
technologies not previously in place.
Only 40% of organizations had a business continuity plan in place prior to the
pandemic. Yet, as a result of the pandemic and the rapid shift to remote work,
32% invested further in this area.
While organizations have made improvements in securing their remote workforces since
the beginning of the pandemic, survey data reveals several areas that could be
considered opportunities for improving secure remote connectivity. These areas include:
Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) – The survey revealed that 65% of
organizations had VPN solutions in place pre-pandemic, but only 37% of
organizations had multi-factor authentication (MFA). While VPNs play an
important role in ensuring secure connectivity, they are simply one part of
securing access. Therefore, if not already in place, it is recommended that
organizations consider integrating MFA into their remote security plans.
Endpoint Security and Network Access Control (NAC) – 76% and 72% of
organizations plan to either upgrade or adopt NAC or endpoint detection and
response (EDR) solutions respectively. As employees work remotely,
organizations face challenges to control the influx of non-trusted devices on their
networks to enable remote work, creating new security challenges overnight. By
adopting NAC solutions, IT teams get increased visibility and control over the
users and devices on their network. EDR solutions deliver advanced, real-time
threat protection for endpoints both pre- and post-infection.
Software-defined Wide-area Networking (SD-WAN) for the Home: 64% of
organizations plan to either upgrade or adopt SD-WAN, but specifically for the
home office. The critical advantage of extending secure SD-WAN functionality to
individual teleworkers, especially super users, is that they can enjoy on-demand
remote access as well as dynamically scalable performance regardless of their
local network availability.
Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) – 17% of organizations made
investments in SASE prior to the pandemic, and 16% invested in SASE as a
result of the pandemic. Still, 58% plan to invest in SASE to some degree going
forward. Although SASE is an emerging enterprise strategy, it is increasingly
seen as an opportunity to combine network and security functions with WAN
capabilities to support the dynamic, secure access needs of today’s
organizations.
Skilled Security Professionals - At the start of the pandemic, only 55% of
organizations had enough skilled IT workers in place to support the shift to
remote work. And while 73% of organizations stated their intention to invest
further in skilled IT workers in the next 24 months, the historical lack of skilled IT
security professionals could present a challenge.
Additional Resources
Read our blog for valuable takeaways from this research or access the full report.
Read more about how Fortinet customers are maintaining business continuity at
scale with integrated and secure Fortinet Teleworker solutions.
Find out how the Fortinet Security Fabric platform delivers broad, integrated, and
automated protection across an organization’s entire digital infrastructure.
Learn more about FortiGuard Labs threat intelligence and research and the
FortiGuard Security Subscriptions and Services portfolio.
Learn more about Fortinet’s Network Security Expert (NSE) Training Institute,
including its free cybersecurity training initiative, the NSE Certification Program,
Security Academy Program and Veterans Program.
Read more about how Fortinet customers are securing their organizations with
Fortinet.
Follow Fortinet on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.
About Fortinet
Fortinet (NASDAQ: FTNT) secures the largest enterprise, service provider, and
government organizations around the world. Fortinet empowers our customers with
complete visibility and control across the expanding attack surface and the power to take
on ever-increasing performance requirements today and into the future. Only the Fortinet
Security Fabric platform can address the most critical security challenges and protect
data across the entire digital infrastructure, whether in networked, application, multi-
cloud or edge environments. Fortinet ranks #1 in the most security appliances shipped
worldwide and more than 465,000 customers trust Fortinet to protect their businesses.
Both a technology company and a learning company, the Fortinet Network Security
Expert (NSE) Training Institute has one of the largest and broadest cybersecurity
training programs in the industry. Learn more at http://www.fortinet.com, the Fortinet
Blog, or FortiGuard Labs.
