Wandera Report Reveals 41% Increase in Malware Incidents on Remote Devices in 2020

Annual threat landscape analysis catalogues the pandemic’s impact on security for remote workers

Wandera, a leader in zero trust cloud security for enterprises, announced findings from their new threat landscape report, “Wandera Cloud Security Report 2021” which provides threat insights gathered by the Wandera Security Cloud, comprised of 425 million sensors across both corporate-owned and BYOD devices. The report explores the threats impacting devices used for work and offers surprising insights into how the pandemic and resulting surge in remote work impacted the threat landscape in 2020.

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Notably, the report revealed 52% of organizations experienced a malware incident on a remote device in 2020, up from 37% in 2019. Of devices compromised by malware in 2020, 37% continued accessing corporate emails and 11% continued accessing cloud storage, highlighting a need for organizations to better configure business tools to ensure fast and safe connectivity for all users in 2021. Other findings include:

• In 2020, 28% of organizations were regularly utilizing an operating system with a known security vulnerability.
• Relative to pre-pandemic times, there has been an increase of up to 100% in connections to inappropriate content during office hours.
• Android devices were 5.3x more likely to have a vulnerable app installed than iOS devices.
• At their peak during the weekend, phishing attacks were 6% more frequent than during the weekday peak.
• In 2020, 4% of users connected to a risky hotspot each week, down from 7% in 2019, however;
• 15% of organizations had at least one device using an app that leaked password data, up from 11% in 2019.

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“2020 saw businesses struggle to transition to fully remote operations while maintaining productivity and security. It’s clear that secure remote access is imperative for organizations across industries,” said Eldar Tuvey, CEO and founder of Wandera. “As we embrace a new era of work, legacy remote access tools should be abandoned in favor of a modern SASE security strategy based on zero trust.”

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