Hybrid Work to Push up Security Spends

The hybrid work strategy adopted by most employers as part of a new normal in IT-enabled enterprises could result in higher spends around cybersecurity, says a study conducted by Fortinet. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents expect data breaches due to the work from anywhere mode that is finding favor with employees. 

The “2023 Work-From-Anywhere Global Study” by Fortinet found that a majority of the 570 companies that it reached out to continued to have employees working from home or embracing some form of hybrid-work. More than 62% of those surveyed said they partially attributed a data breach due to a possible increase in vulnerability due to this trend. 

Key concerns for employers offering hybrid models

The study calls out the insecurity of home networks, personal use of company PCs, as well as other users on the home network as the biggest concerns by the organizations, says Fortinet’s Peter Newton. Most of these vulnerabilities provide a backdoor access to the networks, applications and data and highlights extra precaution around cybersecurity. 

According to the survey, security solutions for remote workforce require higher levels of customization based on each company’s specific requirements. In fact, companies that had suffered a breach due to their hybrid working environment pay more for cybersecurity, be it an antivirus package or a VPN for laptops or modern SASE-based approaches. 

The report says that zero-trust network access (ZTNA) is fast getting resonance with companies who had earlier believed this to be an impossible dream. A whopping 94% of the respondents believe their security budgets would go up to accommodate the hybrid work models while nearly 37% felt the budgets would go up by at least 10% due to this shift. 

Fortinet enhances its SASE use cases

Meanwhile, Fortinet also announced enhancements to three of its customers’ common secure access service edge (SASE) use cases. These include secure internet access, secure private access, and secure SaaS access – to provide a more consistent security posture for WFA users, according to the company. 

The FortiSASE secure internet access now has performance and infrastructure scalability improvements with dedicated public IP support and custom services access that is based on user geolocation. It provides a better user experience for employees trying to access corporate applications located at private data centers or public clouds.