Security Is a Big Concern as Hybrid Workplaces Become Semi-Permanent
There’s a good reason why the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts Cybersecurity Analyst jobs are expected to grow 31 percent through 2029, roughly five times faster than the national average for job growth.
As fears and concerns over the Delta variant continue, it seems that work-from-home and hybrid work (i.e. bringing workers back to the office at least one or two days a week on a staggered schedule) are here to stay, and more than likely to become a permanent arrangement for many companies.
This change also means those cybersecurity concerns that came with shifting workers to remote in early 2020 are likely to remain, experts say.
Palo Alto Networks recently published a report that included responses from 3,000 technology executives, as well as networking, security, and operations workers, to gauge how a more permanent shift to hybrid and work-from-home will affect the security posture of companies both in the U.S. and around the world.
61% of those questioned said they are still struggling to provide proper remote security for their hybrid workforce.
Another 51% put cybersecurity on the top of their list of major concerns.
About two-thirds of those polled said that between 25% and 75% of their employees are still remote, 44% indicated that half of their workforce will remain remote over the next 12 months.
At the same time, a staggering 94% of organizations are still considering hybrid work as an option over the next 12 months, according to the survey.
Another recent survey from HP Wolf Security, which used data from nearly 10,000 respondents in the U.S. and around the world, found that:
83% of IT teams believe at-home working has become a “ticking time bomb” for a network breach.
At the same time, 91% of IT teams believe that organizations had compromised security for the sake of business continuity during the pandemic.
This reliance on cloud apps and services means that securing SaaS and IaaS is now imperative to enterprises. “The variety of breaches and attack vectors over the past few years has demonstrated that bad actors are stepping up their game—and organizations need to do the same. It’s simply not enough to continue doing what’s always been done,” Brendan O’Connor, the CEO and co-founder of security firm AppOmni told Dice.
While enterprises have numerous security positions open, and are willing to bolster their security staff, businesses need to rethink the skills they need to help secure the remote workforce. This includes those who understand how cloud services and apps are changing the security landscape.
Source: Dice