Legacy Security Architectures Threaten to Disrupt the Remote Workforce, Finds Cato Networks Survey
Annual survey of 2,376 IT leaders finds network security of prime concern as most companies continue with work-from-home policies
Cato Networks, the provider of the world’s first SASE platform, released the findings of its fifth annual IT survey, The Future of Enterprise Networking and Security: Are You Ready for the Next Leap? With 2,376 IT leaders participating, the survey provides detailed insight into how IT organizations responded to the pandemic and their plans for 2021.
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Protecting the remote workforce will be enterprises’ prime focus in 2021. IT teams struggled in the early days of the pandemic, rushing to meet the urgent need for widespread remote access. Connecting users often came at the expense of other factors, such as security, performance, and management. As most respondents (81%) expect to continue working-from-home (WFH), 2021 will see enterprises address those other areas, evolving their remote access architectures to protect the remote workforce without compromising on the user experience.
Writes Gartner, “The abrupt surge in remote work has made secure remote access a priority, bringing back to the forefront BYOPC and VPNs for the short term, and emphasizing on SASE and ZTNA for the long term.” 1
“The true test for any enterprise network is how easily it accommodates the unexpected. The right architecture helps IT avoid spending long hours and significant budget responding to a sudden shift in business requirements,” says Shlomo Kramer, CEO and co-founder of Cato Networks. “A true SASE platform delivers global, cloud-scale networking and security to dynamically adapt to whatever comes next.”
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Survey Highlights
- Enterprises will continue working remotely: Only 7 percent of respondents indicated that everyone will move back to the office. More than half (80%) indicated their companies will continue with a remote workforce in whole or in part.
- Securing the remote workforce is proving challenging: Enforcing corporate security policies on remote users was the second most common security challenge (58% of respondents). 57% of respondents indicated they lacked the time and resources to implement recognized security best practices. Boosting remote access performance remains the most popular use case for 2021 (47% of respondents).
- SASE in focus for enterprises in post-pandemic 2021: 91% of respondents expect SASE to simplify management and security. Half of respondents (52%) indicated that SASE would be very or extremely important to their businesses post COVID-19. Of those who’ve already adopted SASE, 86% of respondents experienced increased security.
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