Businesses still have remote working cyber security concerns

Four out of five businesses still remain concerned about the security risks of employees working remotely, despite being over a year into remote working and looking ahead to likely shifts to hybrid remote.

The 2021 Thales Global Data Threat Report revealed that managing security risks is undoubtedly getting more challenging, with 47 per cent of businesses seeing an increase in the volume, severity, and/or scope of cyber attacks in the past 12 months.

Of those who have ever experienced a breach, 41 per cent happened in the last year, nearly doubling from 21 per cent in 2019, marking a significant shift in the threat posed.

Globally, malware (54 per cent) is the leading source of security attacks, followed by ransomware (48% per cent), and phishing (41 per cent). Yet, when it comes to how attacks occur, the message is clear: internal threats and human error are still of great concern to industry. A third of businesses stated that malicious insiders (35 per cent) and human error (31 per cent) are the greatest risks to them, followed by external attackers (22 per cent).

Despite the increased risk remote working has posed to enterprises throughout the pandemic, 46 per cent of businesses report that their security infrastructure was not prepared to handle the risks caused by coronavirus. In fact, only 20 per cent of organisations believe it was very prepared.