New research has found that most companies remain ill-equipped to support a remote workforce and that few are implementing the necessary security measures to ensure data protection.
The 2020 Remote Work Report from Bitglass discovered 41 per cent of businesses have taken no steps to ensure secure data access for a remote workforce. Half of those polled also cited the availability of proper equipment as the biggest challenge on this front.
In spite of these shortcomings, however, most of the respondents said that they would continue to allow remote working even after the lockdown and work from home orders are removed.
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Remote working security
Overall, 72 percent of enterprises surveyed cited malware as their top concern, despite anti-malware being mentioned as the most widely-used tool to secure remote work.
Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of respondents said that remote work is likely to impact their compliance with mandatory regulations such as EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
When it came to particular threats, Bitglass found that businesses as a whole are concerned about securing file sharing (68 percent), web applications (47 percent) and video conferencing (45 percent).
“This research indicates that many organisations are not implementing the security measures necessary to protect their data in the current business environment,” said Anurag Kahol, CTO of Bitglass.
While several respondents have accelerated the migration of user workflows and applications to the cloud following the pandemic, “most are not employing cloud security solutions like single sign-on (SSO), data loss prevention, zero trust network access or cloud access security brokers."
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