When the COVID-19 global epidemic hit nearly three years ago, millions of people were compelled to complete their tasks away from their offices and coworkers. Due to this, there has been an unheard-of rise in the number of workers who complete the majority of their work online from any location with internet access—likely at home. Work-from-home (WFH) employees have been a thing for a while, but they have never made up the majority of a company's workforce.
Organizations, particularly IT departments, had to quickly adapt as the situation changed after the 2020 coronavirus shutdowns and remote workers started to predominate. The phrase "hybrid workforce" became widely used to describe the occurrence after workers dispersed around the globe and subsequently returned to on-site workplaces for a few months, though many did so less frequently than before.
In its "2023 Work-From-Anywhere Global Survey," Fortinet discovered that most of the 570 organisations polled are still willing to allow employees to work from home or are adopting a hybrid-work strategy for their staff. In the last two to three years, work-from-anywhere (WFA) employee vulnerabilities have been cited as a possible cause of data breaches by nearly two-thirds (62%) of the firms.
According to Peter Newton, senior director of product and solutions at Fortinet, the report clearly calls out the personal use of office PCs, home network users, and other users as the main worries by the organisations.
"That highlights the fact that vulnerabilities associated with home networks, personal applications, and personal devices all act as back-door into companies' networks, applications, and data, highlighting the need for continued security awareness training for employees as well as technologies like SASE, SD-WAN, on-prem security appliances, and [zero-trust network access]," he said in an interview with SDxCentral.
The survey found that different businesses use very different security measures for protecting remote workers. Newton asserts that individuals who have suffered a breach associated with WFA are more inclined to invest in both conventional technologies, such as laptop antivirus and VPN, as well as cutting-edge techniques, such as SASE, SD-WAN, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA).
94% of respondents intend to increase their security budget to account for WFA policies, with more than a third (37%) anticipating an increase of 10% or more, the report reads.
“We see the organizations are still in their early stage when it comes to WFA strategy and solutions. Some just started and some ventured further along. Regardless, there is no one-size-fits-all solution, and securing WFA needs a layered-defense and a combination of solutions that work together,” Newton added.