Most firms still don't have a secure remote access solution in place

A digital padlock on a blue digital background.
(Image credit: Shutterstock / vs148)

Most businesses today are doing their best to allow as many of their employees as possible to work from home. However, security still remains a major obstacle. 

According to a new report from cloud security firm Zscaler, just a third of decision-makers are confident they have a secure remote access infrastructure set up.

The company polled 606 CIOs, CISOs and heads of network architecture in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Sweden and the Netherlands for the report, all of which came from enterprises with 3,000+ employees.

Two thirds have most of their business applications in the cloud and almost half expect the number of remote workers to grow up to 50 percent next year.

Obstacles to digital transformation

Security is still considered the main obstacle to digital transformation, with the problem actually worsening this year. In most cases, businesses are worried about the lack of in-house expertise and the perceived complexity of the challenges ahead.

To tackle the problem of the growing remote workforce, some of the respondents are looking at new security solutions; most are planning to adopt SASE (secure-access service edge), either by transitioning all entities at the same time, or transitioning separate entities over a prolonged period.

Even though SASE offers multiple benefits, security is the number one motivator for the change, the report stated. Allegedly, it reduces the risk of security threats and data loss across distributed data, improves network visibility and control across all users and cloud platforms, and reduces infrastructure complexity.

Sead Fadilpašić

Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.