Fortinet Inc.
03/06/2023 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 03/07/2023 08:02
Highlights from the 2023 Work-From-Anywhere Global Study
Almost exactly three years ago, the COVID-19 global pandemic arrived, and millions of workers were forced to do their jobs apart from coworkers and away from workplaces. This resulted in an unprecedented increase in employees who do the majority of their work online from anywhere they can get internet access-more than likely at home. Of course, work-from-home (WFH) employees have been around for years, but they were always a small fraction of an organization's staff.
But, when the tables turned with the coronavirus shutdowns of 2020 and remote workers became the majority, organizations had to quickly adapt-especially IT departments. After employees scattered around the globe, and then months later some returned to on-site workplaces-though many not as regularly as before-the "hybrid workforce" became an accepted term for describing the phenomenon.
Rebranding WFH to WFA
CIOs, CISOs, and IT departments were compelled to update existing work-from-home (WFH) policies and create new ones to account for the fast and massive evolution of how and where their organizations' employees worked. The descriptor "WFH" was rebranded as "WFA" (work-from-anywhere) to better reflect the reality of the hybrid workforce.
To get a better understanding of this new way of working and organizations' new WFA culture and cybersecurity policies, Fortinet commissioned a global research study. The Fortinet 2023 Work-from-Anywhere Global Study is based on a survey conducted in early January 2023 and included 570 organizations from around the world with at least 100 employees.
Survey Questions
The goal of the report was to do a deep dive into how organizations are responding to the major cybersecurity challenges that have come as a result of the WFA evolution and how they're evolving going forward. The survey questions were developed to reveal the level of commitment organizations have in protecting their networks, data, and employees-and what specific cybersecurity concerns have the highest priority.
Other objectives of the survey include:
- Quantifying the number of security breaches that have occurred due to WFA vulnerabilities
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Getting visibility into the current security solutions that organizations have deployed
- Knowing how receptive organizations are to use multiple security vendors
- Learning what the cybersecurity budget priorities are
Survey Says…
After analyzing the survey results, we came away with three key findings:
- WFA is here to stay.
- Organizations consider the insecurity of home networks a major concern.
- Companies are planning significant spending on cybersecurity-but there is no consensus on which solutions they are prioritizing.
Key Survey Highlights
Below are some of the most interesting survey results that are documented in the report.
The responses to one of the primary survey questions-What does your company's remote work policy look like currently?-reveal that 60% of the 570 companies in the study are still accommodating employees working from home, and 55% of organizations are embracing a hybrid work strategy for their employees.