FeaturePrior to the Covid-19 crisis, 21% of organisations globally had over half of their workforce working remotely compared to 50% of the organisations during Covid-19 crisis. The borderless enterprise is one that is characterised by high levels of remote work, high adoption of cloud-based services and applications, and a large number of dispersed IoT, mobile and other devices.
Trends in business technology adoption and employee preferences were driving businesses to adopt the basic characteristics of the borderless enterprise, even prior to the Covid-19 crisis. Indeed, remote work in particular was globally present in notable but far from overwhelming numbers.
Work from home users are becoming the edge of the network.
The Covid-19 crisis has had a tremendous impact on the adoption of remote work and the transition to a borderless enterprise. The crisis, in turn, affected expectations going forward. The borderless enterprise is here to stay. Globally, 40% of surveyed organisations expect more than half of their workforce to be working remotely, this number is nearly double the initial 21%.
The shift to a fully work from home business operations was a sudden change which organisations were not fully prepared for. Distributing approved devices, building network infrastructure and securing users’ network and Internet activity were the biggest technology related challenges organisations faced in transitioning to work from home.
40% of surveyed organisations expect more than half of their workforce to be working remotely.
During the pandemic and associated shutdown, VPN access, secure DNS, secure web gateway, and cloud security solutions like cloud access security broker were the most commonly provided network cybersecurity services.
These services are critical and effective for remote users and secure access; however, many organisations were not ready in adopting such a security strategy yet or prepared for the spike in demand for remote access. Work from home users are becoming the edge of the network. Providing a unified security posture between on premises and the edge is the main technical challenge organisations are still facing which requires a change in the cyber security strategy to adapt with the new norm.
The Global Survey and Zogby analytics report done with global IT decision makers across major countries of UK, US, Japan, China, Australia and Germany provides some information about the resources in demand during the pandemic.
Addition of secure DNS and endpoint security, followed by addition of artificial intelligence to detect anomalous behavior, multi-factor authentication, DDI for network and device visibility and security were the four, as a service offering, most common taken to secure networks and employees while teleworking during the shutdown.
Extending security systems from on-premises to edge is the main challenge in cyber security today.
These actions were taking the most attention in the majority of the organisations given the risk and cyber threat encountered with work from home users on the business. 46% of the surveyed organisations shifted IT resources towards cybersecurity to protect their network during the crises.
This also highlights the challenge and the shortage in IT and cyber security skills and resources most organisations went through during and post the crises which is leading them to rethink and optimise their investments in their IT and security strategies.
In a borderless organisation cloud and the Internet becomes the enterprise network, users may access from anywhere and they become the edge. Unifying the security posture, replicating and extending the security defense systems and policies from on premises to the edge is the main challenge in cyber security today.
46% of the surveyed organisations shifted IT resources towards cybersecurity to protect their network during crises.
This extended attack surface is where we witnessed critical attacks targeting the edge and remote users as a channel to attack enterprise applications and services. Malware exploits, ransomware, phishing and social engineering attacks are the common form of attacks we are seeing targeting a borderless enterprise.
DDI is enriching the security stack with critical information that can be leveraged by cyber security systems .
Infoblox as a global vendor in hybrid DDI including DNS, DHCP, IPAM and DNS security, shifting the business operation to borderless DDI is becoming foundational to provide visibility and control on user access to the network regardless of whether the user is on premises or at the edge.
DDI is not only retaining the availability, scalability and agility to network services, but importantly enriching the security stack with critical DDI information that can be integrated and leveraged by the different cyber security systems in place like the NAC, SEIM, SOAR, vulnerability tools and many others to empower and enhance incident response.
During pandemic VPN access, secure DNS, secure web gateway, cloud access security broker, were most commonly provided network security.
While DNS security is becoming the first line of defense to block malware, exploits and other malicious activity spread across the network. DNS is the first interconnectivity traffic users, applications, IoT and others requires in any borderless enterprise, hardening and securing DNS is critical to protect the business at the earliest stage, then spreading the intelligence to the security ecosystem for faster mitigation and remediation, which we at Infoblox strive to do with our customers every day.
Providing a unified security between on-premises and edge is a challenge organisations are facing which requires a change in security strategy.
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