In the post pandemic world, remote work is the norm rather than exception. Although it has enabled organizations to remain functional during the pandemic, this scenario also gave rise to a host of new security challenges.
This fact was ratified by a recent survey conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG). The respondents comprised of nearly four hundred and twenty IT professionals across North America. The focal point of this study was to gain insights on zero trust security initiatives.
Year on year, the study noted an increase of three times in the number of remote workers before and after the pandemic struck. Nearly 41% of the respondents declared remote work as a top contributor to their security and operational challenges.
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An overwhelming 65% of the respondents were still relying on legacy remote access solutions such as Virtual Private Networks (VPN). Remote desktop protocol (RDP) was also a commonly used legacy mechanism for remote access.
It comes as little surprise that both VPNs and RDPs were extensively targeted by cyber miscreants, being a weaker link in the remote access security chain. Most respondents had a consensus that Zero Trust Security was the way forward to secure remote access.
On a related note, nearly 69% of the respondents declared secure application access as their second most vital consideration when working remotely. Its so because apps and enterprise software are the place where actual productivity takes place.
Towards the end, the research emphasized the need for replacing traditional, legacy security mechanisms such as VPNs with Zero Trust network access initiatives. Securing the outer most periphery of your enterprise network is the best possible defense mechanism.
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Any such zero trust network access tools or mechanisms should also extend to third parties or other stakeholders of a business concern. It is necessary because these entities may also have access to key areas of an organization’s network, even if it is quite limited.
The crux of this research is that enterprises must attach top priority to securing their remote work environments and the Zero Trust Security model is the best available option out there, for many reasons.
