A poll conducted by
SentryBay last week has found that
69.1% of professionals with security responsibility believe a rethink is needed
to deal with the threat of cybersecurity now that devices and applications have
moved outside the corporate network.
The poll, which was conducted on Twitter amongst cybersecurity professionals,
aimed to assess attitudes to cyber threats and methods of protecting vulnerable
devices. It found that 58.3% of respondents believed that a zero-trust approach
to security was essential, and 19.9% thought it was important. When asked if
their organisation had adopted zero-trust, however, only a third (33.6%) said
they had.
One barrier might be the difficulties that companies are experiencing in
implementing BYOD models, for which zero trust is the recommended approach to
securing corporate perimeters. Over a third (33.5%) said that adopting BYOD was
too complicated. The role of enterprise users has also been a BYOD challenge with
user privacy concerns being cited by 28.1% of respondents and user
engagement/friction cited by 19.9%. Management overheads were a challenge for
19.9%.
"BYOD offers enterprises huge CAPEX savings, but these are worth nothing if
adopting the model opens the organisation up to the risk of a cyberattack,"
said Dave Waterson, CEO at SentryBay. "The key to security in this scenario is
proactive protection that is delivered through a software solution that
specifically focuses on preventing sensitive data loss or leakage from the
remote endpoint, and it should be an integral part of a zero-trust approach."
The poll indicates that while 47.7% of organisations have still not adopted
zero-trust, 8.5% are already in the process and 10.6% plan to do so in 2022.
The appetite for a change in cybersecurity methods and practices as devices and
applications move away from physical offices and controlled networks is clearly
important to almost 70% of those working in security, but this does not mean
that it is always easy to achieve.
"While cybersecurity should be a priority for all enterprises, it can be a
daunting prospect to specify and deploy the right solutions for the company's
specific needs," continued Dave Waterson. "Culture change is often required,
the knowledge and experience of security experts should be sought, but most
importantly, endpoint devices - the most vulnerable element in the technology
stack - need to be protected by proven software."
The poll was carried out between November 29 and December 2 2021 and elicited a
total of 4,437 responses.
More information on how SentryBay software can help to protect unmanaged
endpoints to enable BYOD, remote access, enterprise and SaaS applications is
available at
www.sentrybay.com.