Barracuda Report Highlights Key Network Security Challenges

Barracuda has released key findings from a report titled “The state of network security in 2021.”

Commissioned by Barracuda, the research surveyed 750 IT decision makers responsible for their organization’s networking, public cloud, and security to get their perspectives on cloud adoption, working from home, security concerns, and a variety of issues and challenges related to cybersecurity risks.

Overall, the research shows that network breaches, ransomware attacks, and remote-work challenges underscore the need for cloud-native Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) deployments. Highlights from the report include:

• 81% of respondents said their organisation has been the victim of a security breach once in the last year.
• Companies with staff working predominantly from home had a significantly higher network security breach rate (85%), compared to companies with staff working predominantly in the office (65%).
• A full 74% of those surveyed said their organisation has been the victim of at least one ransomware attack in the last year.
• On average, only 14% of employees at the businesses surveyed currently work in the office all the time.
• A full 97% of respondents with company-issued devices share their home internet connection with other members of their household, so the risk of breach remains.
• 73% of companies with all apps in the public cloud have already deployed SD-WAN, twice as many as companies with only a few apps in the public cloud (37%).
• 68% of companies with all apps in the public cloud have deployed Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), while just 38% of companies with only a few apps in the public cloud have deployed it.
• On average, organizations have 31 Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) apps deployed.
• On average, respondents said 64% of their traffic is directed to public cloud providers.

“Organisations are experiencing a high level of network breaches and facing ongoing connectivity and security challenges as they adapt to hybrid work environments,” said Tim Jefferson, SVP, Engineering for Data, Networks and Application Security, Barracuda. “But, they are realizing that moving to SaaS applications and the public cloud improves both the user experience and security, so they’re starting to embrace new SASE technologies.”