Global Businesses Hit by Cyberattacks and Challenges to Scaling Endpoint Security during COVID-19, finds Asavie Global CXO Study into Future of the Office Anywhere

53% of large enterprises cite scaling endpoint security as their number one pain point. Followed by protecting against vulnerabilities (44%), and provisioning for remote workers (38%).

44% of organizations acknowledged facing a cyberattack during COVID19, specifically due to remote working, accelerating the need for secure Office Anywhere.

Organizations are forging ahead with their digital transformation journeys, with 61% prioritizing improving customer experience and 56% improving employee experience​.

Only 28% of North American organizations source remote access services from MNOs with 5% or less in EMEA and APAC.

Asavie, a leader in secure Enterprise Mobility and IoT services, announced the findings from a recently conducted Global CXO Study: The Future of the Secure Office Anywhere. In one of the most extensive global surveys of its kind thus far, the study investigates the business priorities and challenges presented by COVID-19 to more than 1,000 C-suite, IT, and cybersecurity professionals, across 25+ industry verticals. The survey commissioned by Asavie was carried out by Ecosystm, a global independent research firm, in August of this year.

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Organizations have faced an unprecedented crisis this year where they are forced to make large-scale changes to their business processes and employee strategies to survive the initial impact of COVID-19. The study showed that most organizations have not restricted themselves to focusing only on cost reduction and business retention measures. Instead, organizations are using COVID-19 to accelerate digital transformation with more than half of the respondents, (61%) indicating their organizations prioritize improving customer experience and (56%) focused on improving employee experience for the remainder of 2020 and into 2021.

The focus on Digital Transformation will further accelerate the uptake of cloud services, mobile applications, and remote data access, prompting organizations to increasingly focus on threat analysis and intelligence, and identity and access management.

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COVID-19 has also accelerated a shift in cybersecurity priorities as the traditional fixed corporate office location no longer constrains employees. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, 44% of organizations admitted to experiencing a cyberattack, specifically due to remote working during COVID-19. This alarming increase in cyberattacks should be of serious concern for IT managers and enterprises and prompt a rethink of their cybersecurity initiatives holistically for fixed and mobile assets.

Today, IT and cybersecurity teams globally are challenged to deliver the secure office anywhere. A new threat landscape has “up-ended” the traditional network and security service architecture. More than a third (39%) of all respondents cited scaling endpoint security as their number one pain point. A third (33%) indicated that maintaining business continuity was a priority followed by protection against vulnerabilities (32%).

Even though many organizations have implemented WAN technologies that are ultimately provisioned by telecom service providers (e.g., many dedicated private networks, MPLS and some SD-WAN), the survey found that very few organizations look to telecom operators for remote access (28% in North America, 5% in EMEA and 3% in APAC). This is partly because many organizations look at mobile telecom services purely as a cost to be managed, but it also reflects that operators have been unsuccessful at positioning themselves as viable partners for secure access solutions and as part of the WAN ecosystem.

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