Better threat mitigation and network visibility can boost remote-working capabilities

A global survey of 1,077 companies reveals many are turning to DNS cloud security tools to facilitate more permanent WFH arrangements.

Half a year into the pandemic, companies surveyed in a recent global study (conducted by Zogby Analytics Research) were still playing catch up to optimize their remote work experience.

Of the 1,077 respondents, more than 400 were from Asia-Pacific (APAC) namely Singapore, Australia, China, and Japan. The remaining were from the US, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

Key survey data suggest that:

• The borderless enterprise is here to stay. More than 90% of decision-makers considered digital transformation and cloud-managed services a priority. Globally, the percentage of companies with a majority of employees working remotely more than tripled from 21% before the shutdown, to 70% thereafter. Also, 40% of companies—twice that of the pre-COVID-19 rate—were permanently keeping a majority of workers remote.
  
• Organizations were still building out their IT infrastructure and security controls to optimize remote work. Globally, a large majority (85%) of surveyed businesses reported being “very prepared” or “somewhat prepared” with the right technology or cybersecurity in place for their employees to work from home. Within the APAC region, Australian (52%) businesses were “very prepared” for the transition, while Japan (38%) and China (38%) reported lower but still high levels of perceived preparedness. Overall, organizations said distributing sanctioned devices (35%), building network infrastructure (35%), and securing the network (29%) were top IT challenges when transitioning to remote work.

• Threat mitigation and network visibility remained the top security concerns for the remote work environment. Globally, 68% said better threat detection and or mitigation technologies would enable more remote work for their organizations. Specifically, respondents were looking for better visibility into devices on the corporate network (65%), cloud applications workers were using (61%), and compromised devices (46%). In China (80%) and Australia (79%) respondents considered better threat detection to be particularly helpful, while better visibility into devices that are compromised is relatively more valued in Japan (62%) than in other countries.

• Security incidents rising. Half of the surveyed businesses worldwide were seeing more cyber-attacks—with the biggest jumps in China and Australia—while just a quarter were seeing fewer.

• Companies were reversing policies to allow the use of personal applications to foster collaboration. In Australia,73% of companies in Australia (66% in Japan) were allowing workers to connect with each other using applications like WhatsApp, Zoom, and Houseparty, compared to 63% globally.

• Companies were using cloud security tools, particularly DNS, DHCP, IP Address Management (DDI), to secure the borderless enterprise. A majority of the companies in Australia (73%), China (65%) and Japan (72%) planned on making additional investments in DNS to secure their expanded networks.

Said George Chang, Vice President of Sales for the Asia-Pacific and Japan region, Infoblox Inc., the secure cloud-managed network services firm that commissioned the survey: “When organizations in APAC rushed to enable remote work overnight, their top priority was making sure that workers could connect to enterprise applications from their homes—sometimes through unsecured personal devices. While most organizations can now accommodate the basics of remote work experience, this report highlights the need for more security controls.”

To meet that need, a majority of surveyed companies were turning to DNS to rapidly set up a foundational layer of security for employees working from home, Chang added. Using a hybrid DNS security solution, enterprises can create a ubiquitous layer of visibility and security across their expanded infrastructure, he asserted.