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.

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Asavie, a leader in secure Enterprise Mobility and IoT services, today 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.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201006005486/en/

Cybersecurity key challenges faced during COVID-19 (Graphic: Business Wire)

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.

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.

Additional Report Findings:

• 30% of enterprises declared that provisioning remote workers and VPNs was a challenge. The indirect impact is that employees are now taking it upon themselves to manage their own IT needs, which ultimately leads to inconsistency across the organization and potential security gaps.
  
  
• The top 3 industry sectors reporting cyber security attacks were Media & Telecoms (62%), followed by Financial Services (60%) and Health & Life Sciences (50%).
  
  
• Scaling endpoint security was the top IT challenge in North America (42%) and APAC (42%) whereas enforcing endpoint policy and compliance was top in EMEA (45%).

Ralph Shaw, CEO with Asavie, said, “the evidence from Asavie’s global study shows the urgent need for the digital business to deploy “frictionless” security and access to applications and data to create the best possible user experience for employees and customers. Our Branch of One® solution specifically addresses this challenge by delivering secure frictionless access to all business resources, with full mobility.”

“The fact that only 28% of enterprises in North America source remote access services from telecom operators presents an immense market opportunity for our mobile network operator partners to leverage the Branch of One® to provide network native, clientless access services.”

Amit Gupta, CEO, at Ecosystm commented, "Organizations should see the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to rethink cybersecurity initiatives holistically for fixed and mobile assets. The Future of Work will mean supporting remote workers, at temporary or home offices, ad-hoc points of sales, or employees on the go. This means that organizations must secure devices, irrespective of where people work from and irrespective of the network they use. Every employee or device should be treated like a branch of one.”

Gupta continued, “CIOs and CISOs are coming to terms with the reality of increasing mobile workloads on remote devices and realize that private enterprise networks must be seamlessly extended to incorporate mobile and IoT endpoints from a single user to large teams.”

For a detailed look at the full report, visit: https://www.asavie.com/global-cxo-study-2020

Webinars October 6, 2020: Join Asavie and Ecosystm on a live webinar where we present the findings of the study. Speakers include, Claus Mortensen, Principal Analyst and Ashok Kamar, Principal Advisor of Ecosystm with Mick Higgins, SVP Product with Asavie.

#1 10am BST/5pm Singapore Time: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/18131/444111

#2 9am EST/2pm BST: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/18131/444112

Survey background: Asavie commissioned Ecosystm to conduct detailed interviews with more than 1,000 key business stakeholders including C-Suite, IT and cybersecurity leaders, across 25 industries in North America, EMEA and the Asia Pacific. Respondents came from companies of all sizes and a wide distribution of branch offices. The study grouped participants into the following company sizes: 100– 249 employees; 250 – 999 employees; 1,000 – 4,999 employees; 5,000 – 9,999 employees; and 10,000 employees and over .Less than 25 branch offices, 25 to less than 00 branch offices, 100 to less than 250 branch offices and over 250 offices.

About Asavie
Asavie’s on-demand mobility and IoT services provide increased productivity, valuable insights and enhanced security for the digital business. Asavie’s distributed private network and cloud platform, unifies visibility and control across all mobile and IoT endpoints. Strategic distribution and technology partners include AT&T, IBM, Microsoft, O2, Singtel, Telefonica, Verizon, VMware and Vodafone. Asavie is an ISO27001 certified company. www.asavie.com , follow @Asavie on twitter.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201006005486/en/

Anne Marie McCallion
ReturnPR
+353 86 834 9329 / [email protected]

Hugh Carroll
Asavie
+353 86 604 9270 / [email protected]

Source: Asavie

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