2020 Remote Workforce Security Report [Authentic8]

Download the 2020 Remote Workforce Security Report by completing the form on the right.

Until recently, remote work was a privilege enjoyed mostly by executives, programmers, and freelancers. Almost overnight, this has changed, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working from home (WFH) now is the “new normal” for large swaths of the corporate workforce. How fundamental will this change be going forward? What impact does this shift already have on cybersecurity and the role of IT? On the plus side, many business leaders have been surprised that remote work isn’t as impractical as they thought – cloud-based services make it a reality for many roles in the organization.

Remote work even increases employee productivity — but how sustainable is this “new normal” really? Productivity benefits can vanish in the same split second that it takes users to click the wrong link, or cut-and-paste confidential customer data into a personal cloud storage account.

For IT, relying on the unmanaged devices and home networks of employees has resulted in a loss of control and oversight. Eighty-three percent of respondents essentially admit that they have lost control over the online activities of employees; specifically, they agree or somewhat agree that the responsibility for securing the remote workplace is shifting from the IT security team to the individual employee.

Following the rush into remote access expansion, IT security and compliance leaders now need to focus on regaining control and closing those widening blind spots to ensure data protection, privacy, and regulatory compliance. This could be the most significant takeaway from our 2020 Remote Workforce Security Report, which is based on a survey among 413 IT and cybersecurity leaders and practitioners.

Three-fourths of the surveyed organizations, they told us, are now working from home, compared to only one-quarter before the crisis. Other highlights from this report include:

  • Eighty-four percent of organizations say that productivity remains constant or is increasing in their new “remote access” workplace
  • Similarly, 84% of survey respondents state they will likely continue to support increased work-from-home capabilities in the future
  • In fact, 33% of those surveyed consider now making some positions permanently remote Given the bleak background, these results speak volumes about the resilience of the organizations surveyed, and specifically of the IT teams who rose to the challenge.

While the numbers indicate that remote work will play a much bigger role in the post-pandemic era than before COVID-19, the results also show that this is not a foregone conclusion

We hope you’ll find this report informative and helpful as you continue your efforts in protecting your IT environments against insider threats.

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